The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Behavior
Edward Hessler

I haven't read The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (2010) by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. This book, a natural history and memoir, won the John Burroughs award for nature writing in 2011. It has received rave reviews and appears destined to become a classic, if it isn't already.

Bailey, bedridden with a chronic illness, encounters a forest snail. She then spent her days lying in bed, observing the snail.

Ms. Bailey has a wonderful webpage about this book, one of the most appealing webpages I've seen. It has questions (with answers), two audios of carrot crunching (one of the snail and one of her to which she playfully adds numbers: the snail has 2642 teeth; she has 32), a video of the snail, an excerpt, a biography with photographs, a book trailer (a Moby Award finalist), a screen saver, an entry on its use in medical humanities, and more.