From Publishers Weekly
In a starred review, PW described this fantasy/adventure about a giraffe snatched from her African home as "laced with dry humors and memorable characters... a pure delight." Ages 8-12.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6?Ruva, a young wild giraffe, is captured and taken to a San Francisco zoo. She thinks only of returning to Africa, and with the help of a scruffy rat named Troll and a cynical chameleon, Nelson, she makes her way back to the same boat, the Apocalypso, commanded by the evil Slope family, that brought her to America. On board, her old friend and tutor Rodentus von Stroheim the Third, and a young boy, Jabila, work together with the animals to carry out a plan to free themselves from the tyranny of their captors. The plot is fresh and fast-moving, and many of the details inventive?Strangleweeds and Gross Green Sea-Going Sargasso Snails play a large part in the group's eventual freedom, and intriguing Biblical stories told from the animals' point of view add interest. However, grumpy Nelson's anti-female bias quickly becomes tiresome. Children new to animal fantasy should respond well to the book's sense of adventure and excitement, and to the feel-good ending. Although this is not quite in the same league as such modern-day classics as Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Atheneum, 1971) or Dick King-Smith's animal stories, it does showcase yet another side of the multifaceted author who created the highly original The Ear, the Eye and the Arm (Orchard, 1994).?Ellen Fader, Oregon State Library, Salem
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
