These animals, who hold strong beliefs and opinions, include chickens, squirrels, sheep, and many others.

The book offers a humorous romp through the lives of a couple dozen animals and two hapless humans. 

All sorts of nonhuman animals (animals) have opinions about what they like, dislike, or want or don't want to do. They express themselves in many different ways just as we do, and as weird as some nonhuman (and human) choices may seem to us, that's what they want to do.

For these and other reasons, when I learned of Harvard-educated lawyer Michelle Lerner's new book A Series of Opinionated Animals, I couldn't wait to read about a panoply of astonishing opinionated animals including "a disabled sheep named Lamby―the 'Woolly Bully'―[who] wears children’s skateboarding elbow pads, develops a taste for blue corn chips, and learns to herd cats, all while demanding her meals by ramming her head against the kitchen door" and a squirrel named Monster who "recovers from his mysterious past by throwing tantrums, serenading the neighborhood with squirrel opera, and forming an inseparable bond with a patient rabbit named Finn." If you're wondering why Lerner wrote this fascinating and engaging book, read on.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write A Series of Opinionated Animals?

Michelle Lerner: After I finished writing my novel, Ring, a serious literary fiction endeavor about grief, I started a historical novel but didn’t feel like working on it. My spouse, Gray, had just finished reading How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery and said, “You should write about our animals.” I replied that lots of people have animals—it’s common—so why would people want to read about ours? “Well,” he said, “I don’t think it’s common to have a neurologically........

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