Books like Tarka the Otter

This is the life story of an otter called Tarka that means "Water Wanderer." What I like about this book is that I was able to learn so many things about an animal that I have not seen in the real world. I do not even remember seeing one in a number of zoos, both local and overseas, that I have so far been to.The writing is simple but there are so many otter-related terms that I had to google or guess while reading. First I thought I would understand the story without looking up for those words but I was continuously lost page after page until I checked and learned that "dog" is how a male otter is called, "bitch" is for female otters and "whelp" or "pup" for baby otter. [You have to understand that there are no otters here in the Philippines.] In those few pages when there where the word "dog" I thought that the otters had a dog in their midst. So, I wondered for a bit, why is the dog not harassing the otter when otters have some resemblance to mice being part of the same family? Lesson: consult the dictionary, K.D. or better yet get a Kindle so you just hover on the word and you'll automatically see its meaning. Maybe, in the next Christmas bonus. The narration is in the POV of Tarka so it is based on the eye-level and viewpoint of the animal and not those of human being. So, the swamp is a big body of water, the shrub is described as a tree, on ordinary (not rampaging) river is a challenge to cross, etc. It is obvious that Williamson spent a lot of time researching about otters just to make sure that their natural behavior was captured accurately in the story.At first, I also thought that this was a children's book until I noticed that there is no fantasy element in the story: the animals (otters, seal, rats, fox, owl, etc) have no dialogues. For example, otters yikker and Williamson used the actual sounds of their shrieks or cries in the story like: hompa, hompa, hompa, ik-yang, wuff, wuff, etc that appear in italics in the narrative. Since there are no dialogues, I understand that some readers might find this boring. However, if you read slowly, you would notice some paragraphs or phrases are poetic. According to Wiki, Williamson was first and foremost known as a poet that a novelist.The story is divided into two parts: the first year and the last year. In the first year, the setting is in the river called River Taw and Tarka's lover is called Greymuzzle. In the second part, the last year, the setting is the other river called River Torridge and Tarka has a new mate White-Tip. The first part is quite boring but the action picks up in the second because of the chase and Tarka's final confrontation of the villain Deadlock. There is even a map that shows the actual place in Devon or Devonshire, a county in England. Overall, it is a nice reading experience. Learning so many things in just one small cute book. This is not a children's book but the story can be appreciated by readers in all age groups. I particularly recommend this book, however, to all animal lovers especially to those who are fond of exotic or already endangered animals.