Puppy Steps by Libby Rockaway

Rating: WORTHY!

I found this to be a cool title from an author with an amazing name! How cool is 'Rockaway'? Yeah! The book is intended as a practical guide to raising a dog to be well-behaved and sociably-adjusted, and from the start it was obvious this was not only written competently, but also well intelligently thought-out. This girl knows what she's doing. I'm not a dog owner at present, but I have owned and known many dogs and I've never been a fan of the training-your-pet-as-a-circus-dog, but that's not what this is about. It's about building a relationship with your pet so that you both maximize your comfort and fun, and become true companions, not over-bearing master and timid slave. It's about raising a healthy and emotionally well-balanced pet who heeds you without you having to get heavy-handed, domineering, or frustrated.

The book is replete with lists and charts, hints and tips, and is set out in a smart and orderly fashion,. It features step-by-step instructions towards the end of the book, on how to achieve specific goals. This is where the 'Puppy Steps' title was so great. The steps start small, when your pet is young, and they don't demand too much of you or your dog - except in that you need to stay with the program or you're not going to get results.

Note that this involves spending a lot of time with your pet, especially in the early stages. But then why get a pet if you're not going to spend lots of time with it? This kind of training cannot be done with a five minute session here and there; it does need time and work on a daily basis. I like the way the author maintains a positive attitude and a good sense of humor, and explains things in easy-to-grasp way without being condescending or talking down to the reader. I'm a visual person - I often grasp things better when I can see it being done and have notes to fall back on than I do with only written instructions, and we're covered there, too: the author has several videos on YouTube.

The thing I liked most about this is the emphasis on positive reinforcement, which is not always what you might think. It's not just a matter of having the dog do something and rewarding it. Sometimes the rewards come when the dog is doing nothing, but is nonetheless behaving and doing what you would wish them to, such as staying out from under your feet. It's also not a matter of leaping from no behavior to good behavior. You have to take the puppy steps and do them in the right way so your dog gets a clear and positive message. I like the way the training is about having fun with your pet and making sure your puppy also has fun. You're working with the animal, not against it. You can take shortcuts to good behavior when you're using the animal's own behaviors and instincts to get messages across about what you expect.

I liked this book. I liked that it made sense, that it was clear, instructive and well-written. Obviously I haven't tested out these guidelines with a puppy of my own, so I can't say this worked for me, but to me the training makes good sense, and I think this book does too, if you and your puppy are going to grow to get along with each other! The You Tube videos are evidence enough for me, and I recommend this book as a worthy read and a useful tool for dog owners.

A Night at the Animal Shelter by Mark J Asher

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a short and thoroughly adorable novelette which frankly brought a little lump to my throat by the ending. I'm not kidding. I've worked at a vet's office as an assistant caregiver, so I understand how it goes. It's not the same, of course, as the questionably named 'animal shelter' by any means, but I get the idea so I could relate.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I bought this, thinking maybe it was a young children's picture book, but it's not - it's all text all the time, and it can be a young children's book or a fully mature adult's book. It begins with the humans settling the animals down for the night - on Christmas Eve. Once they're left, the animals start talking to each other and it was at this point that I wondered if I could really read this, but the conversations are interesting, and not over-done, not sappy or dumb, and there's a nice thread of humor.

Of course this isn't just any Christmas Eve, and the animals have a few innocent adventures to get under way before the big day dawns. I loved the story, I loved how it was written, and I dearly loved the ending. I recommend this one completely.

The Zebra Said Shhh by MR Nelson, Tamia Sheldon

Rating: WORTHY!

Well, it's time once again to review some children's literature! I have two wonderful ones for you. This is a beautifully illustrated young children's book aimed (and good luck with that!) at getting your young 'un off to sleep at night! I actually think this has a good chance of succeeding because it has a mantra-like, almost hypnotic cadence as the zebra finds himself, stripe me, having to shush, in turn, all the other animals in the zoo which, apart from one reptile and one bird, seems to be exclusively devoted to mammals.

So once he's talked in turn to those pesky monkeys (and you know what those guys are like after they get high on peanuts!), risked hurting the lion's pride, repeated himself to the parrot, asked the tortoises to slow down for the day, managed, at a stretch, to convince the giraffe, and on and on, suddenly, everything seems remarkably quiet. Hmm!

I liked this story and adored the images, and the book works well even on a smart phone in the crappy Kindle app, FYI. They look awesome on the iPad in landscape mode, even in the crappy Kindle app. I think Nelson and Sheldon are a team to be reckoned with. Assuming they continue to get a good night's sleep. Shhh!

Our Amazing World: Dinosaurs by Kay de Silva

Rating: WORTHY!

I reviewed another book by Kay da Silva back in April, 2016. That one was about sea turtles.

This is a children's introduction to dinosaurs and has photographs of fossils and computer-rendered pictures of dinosaurs in their natural environment. I was able to read this on a smart phone with no problems, although you really want a bigger screen to really see the pictures. You can enlarge the pictures on the phone screen, but frankly, and unlike the claws of Deinonychus, they were not very sharp! This probably won't bother young kids as much as it did me!

The real value of the book is in the details it gives. The author really goes into dinosaurs and their life and habits; not so much that a child would get lost or overwhelmed, but more than you would typically find in a book like this one. The images are not all the typical favorites, either. Yes, Tyrannosaurus puts in an appearance, but we also see Tarbosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Albertaceratops (which looks like it's having a bad horn day), Yangchuanosaurus, Allosaurus, Diplodocus, Elasmosaurus (which wasn't actually a dinosaur!), Kentrosaurus, Peteinosaurus (again, not actually a dinosaur), Plateosaurus, and a host of others, in addition to photographs of footprints, eggs, and skeletons, all supported in the text.

If your kids love dinosaurs (and friends) then this is definitely something you should consider adding to their collection.

Love Volume 3: The Lion by Frédéric Brrémaud, Federico Bertolucci

Rating: WARTY!

(Note that this was an advance review copy)

I've been following this series since it began, and after the first two volumes (The Tiger and The Fox, I found I didn't like this third one. The art work was poor in comparison with the previous two volumes (although decent by your average run-of-the-mill comic books standards) and the story was nothing but one long run of violent and bloody encounters between lions and their prey, and between lions and other lions.

It was not interesting to me, and there really was very little respite from it, especially given that the art work offered nothign truly appealing to look forward to. This doesn't accurately even reflect the life of a lion, which is actually much more along the lines of lying around all day, day after day, and once in a while going on a hunt, and of course, once in a while mating and defending territory. It's really pretty boring, and why people think lions are majestic and kings of the jungle is a complete mystery to me.

On a technical note, I had a problem with this advance review copy on the iPad in Bluefire reader - it would not open at all and locked-up the app! I was able to open and read it on Adobe Digital Editions on my desktop computer. I think this had the potential to tell a really engaging story, but somewhere the lions lost the scent and meandered off. I can't recommend it.

Orange Animals on the Planet from Speedy Publishing

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not sure about the idea of an authorless book, since no author is named here, or about a publisher named 'Speedy', but I think this is the second children's book from this publisher I've reviewed and they're not at all bad. This one was quite dramatic: "on the planet"?! But orange animals are often dramatic, although the definition of orange is stretched somewhat here. Flamingos put in an appearance at one point, for example. I guess pink is the new orange! LOL!

That said, the book is very colorful and informative - a bit of information here and there - just enough for growing minds, and some really engaging photographs of the various animals. What was most impressive to me was the unusually wide range that's covered here. Typically a children's animal picture book favors mammals - the cuddly ones, even if cuddly when used there is stretched a bit to include lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It was nice to see a wider world here, with representatives of all five vertebrate classes featured: fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. There were also insects and arachnids, so kudos for that. It's important for children to learn how varied life is, and how important it is that we protect that variety.

We get to meet the clownfish (a mated pair here, evidently). What we don't learn is that Pixar's view of Clownfish life was biased in that typically, when the female dies, the male spontaneously goes transgender and becomes the new dominant female! Nemo could never have had his dad chasing him across the ocean after mom died! Not that a parent fish chases its offspring across the ocean! If it had, it's far more likely to have been the mom clownfish, but I digress. We also get to see and learn about the Andean cock-of-the-rock, the tiger, the Julia butterfly, the Baboon spider, orangutans, spider crabs, river hogs, newts, corn snakes and so on. It's a lot of orange. Note also that weights and measures in this book are in metric, not the lone hold-out USA system.

I liked this book. It's bold and straight-forward, varied and colorful, and educational. You can't ask for more in a children's book.

If Bees Are Few by Various Writers

Rating: WORTHY!

I have to say up front that I am not a big fan of poetry. Too much of it seems way too pretentious to me, but I am a big fan of bees. The aim of this book was to bring together "a hive of bee poems", with the profits from it going to the University of Minnesota Bee Lab. So, if you don't want to read the book, at least consider sending some money to the lab! Maybe they'll send you a free beard of bees!

No, they won't - the bees would just die without the queen, and if they included a queen, she would probably die from being so exposed! This is how vulnerable bees are, and whatever is causing Colony Collapse Disorder isn't helping. If the bees go, we're screwed for a host of food plants, and gorgeous flowers and trees which we can only enjoy if the bees pollinate them. Besides, bees are cute!

CCD has affected a lot of nations: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, and the USA, to name a few. Unfortunately these nations are not all well represented in this book! France, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland have no representation as far as I can tell, and continents like South America and Africa not at all or hardly at all. There seems to be a strong focus on Minnesota (about 20% of the writers are from there or live there), and around 80% of the writers are from or resident in the USA. That said, there is some representation from a wide variety of nations, if only to the tune of one or two writers each.

The title, If Bees are Few comes from Emily Dickinson's 1755 poem To Make a Prairie, and though I am not a fan of hers, her poems were nonetheless among the best here. There is a preface and an introduction which I skipped. I never read those things, but I did read the afterword by Marla Spivak which talked about the whole purpose of the book. She's well-worth listening to.

The poems are from people both living and not, and there were some sterling names among those who have gone to that great beehive in the sky: Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Devereaux, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudyard Kipling, DH Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, and William Shakespeare, Alfred Tennyson, Vergil, Walt Whitman, and William Butler Yeats. Let's face it, whether you're a fan of poetry or not, these contributors are no lightweights! The variety of poetry is remarkable. Some are long, some short, some are like traditional poems, some not, and some are more like short stories than poems. Some are serious, some amusing, some descriptive, some truly poetic, if not obscure! Some are solely about bees, others have bees make cameos, just buzzing in and out. There is something for everyone, though, which I really liked.

I found myself preferring the older poems but there were some more recent ones that had a good voice, too. All in all, it made for an entertaining read even for someone like me. And it's for a really good cause. It's for all of these reasons that I recommend this book.

Sea Turtles by Kay de Silva

Rating: WORTHY!

Who doesn't like turtles? This brilliant color story for young children goes under the ocean to look at sea turtles, and with the glorious photographs, we're right there with the divers. But it's not only gorgeous pictures! It's also an education as to how these turtles are built 9strongly!), how they live (peacefully!) and what they get up to (travel and food!). Most of their time it seems, from the pictures, is spent on vacation in warm holiday resorts! I am envious!

On the other hand there's a lot of travel involved. It's a lonely life, and unlike me when I commute, they don't get to listen to audio books! What goes on in their turtle minds as they swim thousands of miles? Plus if you're a turtle you have to eat sponges which, while I am sure is very absorbing, is not my favorite food! Other turtles eat jellyfish, which sounds tempting, but I'm guessing it doesn't really taste like Jell-O! Note that green turtles get their name not from their color (which isn't always green), but from the fact that they eat greens! Healthy little critters!

Then there's that laborious trek over the sand to lay eggs. I don't know about you but I dislike the sand sticking all over me after I come out of the ocean, but the turtles don't seem to mind being coated in it. Turtles are tough. They have to be to survive that mad dash over the sand after hatching, with predators on the look-out for them. No wonder they are survivors and live so long: eighty to a hundred years!

This book, part of 'an amazing world' series, was a joy: very informative, readable on a smart phone, and it talked about different species and was fill of information in small bite-sized pieces that kids can remember. I recommend it.

The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

Rating: WARTY!

While I've seen the Dolittle movies (both the Rex Harrison version, and the Eddie Murphy version) I've never read any of the books. You could argue that I still haven't since the one I review here is a Dalmatian Children's Classic (so-called), and as such is a condensed version (adapted by Kathryn R Knight) illustrated (by Nick Price) with many line drawings in which Dolittle is very much drawn in the mold of WC Fields!

As with many older books, there have been complaints of racism inherent in the book's pages, which I find rather disingenuous when applied retroactively. Yes, there are old books which are racist by today's standards, and the Dolittle books are among them. There are even old books (Mein Kampf comes to mind) which are racist by their own contemporary standards. I can't really speak to that since the version I read was an adaptation which has been washed clean of the original racism. I also find it interesting that Eddie Murphy agreed to act in this role given the book's history! Maybe they were aiming for some sort of redemption by making Dolittle black?

I have read various commentaries on this topic. It isn't a defense to say that this book isn't racist by its own contemporary standards. The original of this novel was racist by any standards. Is it a defense to say it isn't maliciously racist? By that i mean did it actively intend harm through the racism it contained? I don't think so, but that doesn't mean it wasn't harmful. In this version, the racism has been bleached (yes, that is a reference to the original!), but I think as long as I'm mentioning this, it's only fare to also mention that Lofting wrote other books in this series condemning of slavery, and that even in this book, he depicts an African king who is pissed-off with white men because of their depredations of his nation's natural resources. To me, this goes a little way towards mitigating against charges of overt or active, or outright malicious racism. That does not make the book lily white, so to speak.

My biggest complaint about this particular version of the novel isn't about racism or the fact that the doctor speaks to the animals or they to him - it's children's fantasy after all! - but that the author doesn't have a clue about animals. Hugh Lofting was a soldier (he originated the idea for these stories in the trenches in France in World War One), not a veterinarian or a biologist, but even so, it would not have taken much effort, even in 1920, to look up a little bit about Africa to discover that it isn't home to Orang-utans. Nor would it have taken much more effort to discover that gorillas, orang-utans, and chimpanzees are apes, and not monkeys, and eagles are not commonly found out on the open ocean! It was that kind of thing which annoyed me more than anything else, so for me, the story was sadly lacking in a decent foundation.

Given the premise - a doctor discovers he has more affinity with animals than with humans, and can understand them and therefore treat them expertly - it seems to me that a golden opportunity was wasted here to teach children something about animals, biology and evolution. The novel may well be be moderately entertaining for very young children who question little, but for my money (and note that the book is available free online) it really wasn't a worthy read at all (I skipped a lot of the second half), not when there are more modern and better written novels with these themes - animals and adventure. Besides, this novel is out of copyright now, and neither Hugh Lofting (who died in 1947) nor his estate are going to get anything for it if you buy it! Whether oyu think he ever deserved anything for it is up to you! Maybe it's time for someone to rewrite this in an intelligent, educational, and non-racist way?

Bubba the Bulldog Tries to Smile by Bree Clausen

Rating: WORTHY!

I'm not a fan of bulldogs. They're quite literally deformed little dogs, but this story really has little to do with them. Real ones, anyway! Bubba the Bulldog is in a sorry state: he doesn’t seem to know how to smile! His best friend Ryan the Human smiles miles of smiles all the while. Apparently Bubba suffers from heavy lip syndrome! He just can’t lift ‘em! One day Ryan came home with his leg in a cast. Skateboarding was going to be out for a while. So was smiling, it seemed. No matter what Bubba did, Ryan could not seem to lift his lips any more than Bubba could his own.

Ryan would never tape up his dog’s lips to make him smile, but when Bubba got wrapped up in tape all by himself, his mouth did seem to be sporting a smirk, but it would take something truly odd which Bubba found inexplicably under Ryan’s bed to bring a really toothy grin to his face. I wonder what it was he found?

I liked this story because it was fun, and absurd, and the colorful drawings were highly amusing. For all I know, this might even be based on a true story! I recommend it.

I Love my Dog by David Chuka

Rating: WARTY!

From the auhtor of such literary efforts as Billy and the Monster who Loved to Fart and Billy and Monster: The Superhero with Fart Powers comes yet another disaster: a book about dogs (and yes, there are fart jokes in this book). Two kids, boy and girl, are excited to go find their first pet dog, but never once is the animal pound considered. All the dogs featured here are so-called "pure bred". The first dog is an Alaskan Malamute, and though the story is initially narrated by the sister, when we meet the dog, it describes its own role, but it says, "Do you know man still uses me as a sled dog...." I think a gender -neutral word would have been better, as in "Do you know that people still use me as a sled dog...." There's no reason at all to imply that only men can do this. Not in a year when we're newly celebrating the fact that the US finally wised-up and let women have their run of the army!

We also meet a Schnauzer (and yes, the name does come from snout, but it refers to the dog looking like it has a moustache!), an old English Sheepdog, a Poodle (the second most intelligent breed of dog, believe it or not), Dalmatian, Collie, Greyhound, Dachshund, Cocker Spaniel, Great Dane, Saint Bernard, Golden Retriever, and several others.

We learn only a very small amount about each dog, and while we do learn a bit about the down side of dog ownership, we don't learn anything, really, about what is potentially the most important thing about these 'pure bred' dogs, which is that inbreeding leads to awful deficits in too many of these animals. These problems range from, for example, deafness and hyperuricemia in the Dalmatian, to heart disease in the Boxer, to hip dysplasia in the German shepherd, to breathing problems in bulldogs, and other issues, such as mitral valve disease in the King Charles Spaniel (although this dog is not featured in this book).

I would have preferred a book that mentioned the options available and talked more about how much care, attention, and outright love a pet needs, as well as what it costs in buying the dog in the first place, and then in ongoing outlay for food, toys, bedding, and vet bills for routine visits alone. I can't recommend this book because it lacks far too much important information and kids deserve so much better.

Luna the Night Butterfly by Lily Lexington

Rating: WORTHY!

Luna has issues. She's glowing luminous green to begin with, which is a problem, because she's a night "butterfly" and those nighttime predators are pretty skillful. Fortunately, she meets none in this poetic paean to positivity and perseverance (and don't try saying that too fast unless you cover your mouth!). Luna's kinda cute actually, despite having two legs and four arms, but you know what they say - four armed is forewarned. Maybe I got that wrong. Never mind.

Poetry is only one pleasing part of the picture (there I go again! Sometimes you just have to pee....). The images are gorgeous. Colorful (yes, even the night-time ones) and wonderfully rendered. Luna actually doesn't realize that she's a Luna Moth, but when she finds out, she adapts admirably and ably. She's absolutely awesome! I give her an 'A'!

Which is My Way Home? by John G Pedicini

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a fun children’s book: seagull vs coyotes featuring snail and puppy! What’s not to like? Note that the coyote encounter was a bit scary, and the images for that encounter are suitably dark, so really young children might not appreciate it.

The story is that a young seagull loses his home on an iceberg and is chased by a polar bear. If I had a penny for every time that;s happened to me. We can conclude from all this that these events took place at the north pole. Somehow this little seagull seems to rub everyone up the wrong way and ends up shunned, even by other seagulls. Finally there’s some rest to be had in a forest, which is just as well since it’s dark already. This is hardly the natural habitat of a gull, and there are many new and scary things, not least of which are the hungry coyotes. They’re always hungry, the predators, in these stories, aren’t they?!

Well it turns out that the gull is not the only lost soul in the forest that night. There's a puppy and some young children, and working together, the avian, the mammal, and the gastropod manage to make it through, and bring the children to safety. A fun, scary and unusual adventure told in poetry. I liked it!

Animals That Make Me Say Ewww! by Dawn Cusick

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a cute way to get children interested in learning about nature. I recommend it on that basis although I had an issue or two with it. One issue was a question of wording. On page 13 I read, "help them smell better" and I felt, in order to be clear, it should have read, "help them to detect smells better", or something to that effect! A minor point but worth attention. Other than that it was written well, but personally, I would have liked it better if it had said a word or two about endangered species given that it featured one or two, such as the gorilla. The attraction for kids is based on the gross-out factor, obviously, but since I knew this going in, I had no problem with it. There are other books in a series based on other perspectives, to round-out the picture, such as Get the Scoop on Animal Poop, Bug Butts, Animal Tongues, Animal Eggs: An Amazing Clutch of Mysteries and Marvels, Get the Scoop on Animal Puke!, and Animals That Make Me Say Wow!, none of which I've read.

The novel covers a variety of animals, but is focused strongly on mammals, and often the larger or better known ones at that. This is a bit class-ist, but it's not all mammals, by any means. There is the occasional insect or two, a fish here and there, a spider (my favorite spider, too!), and an amphibian or two, and quite a few birds, so there is variety, and for me, if you can get kids through that potentially difficult door of initial interest with the cuddly ones, that goes a long way to keeping them interested and helping to wise them up to other less adorable animals, and to what we're doing to the world, and how much we have to lose if we don't all wise up! Hopefully they will realize that not all animals are furry and relatively closely related to us. There's a huge variety out there, and maybe they will realize they can find 'eww' locally, too, if they're willing to keep their eyes open and away from their video games for a while! They don't need to travel to exotic locations.

My biggest problem was with technical issues. This is an advance review copy, so hopefully these will be worked out before the final copy is published, but just FYI, there were, for me, two main problems. The first was that many words were missing the letter 'r'. I have no idea what that was all about because it wasn't every 'r' which was missing - just some! For example, on p12 'bird beak' was missing an 'r' - it has a space instead. The same thing happens on p22. The same with kangaroo on p27, with flower on p35, with bird and fur on p39, with strong on p47, sources p51, 'Fly swatted and directions' on p55, 'upward and figure' on p58, 'are' on p59, 'Fight-or-flight and response' on p62. Also one 'f' in buffalo is missing on p77. Just the one!

This problem was apparent my iPad both in the Bluefire reader version, and in the kindle app version (I wouldn't recommend trying to read this book on a smart phone!). The Kindle app also screwed-up the placement of the pictures. Many of the pictures are evidently seated on a blue-green colored background, but in the Kindle app they were missing this completely and were all over the place and appeared in a variety of sizes! Bluefire Reader did not have this problem. Also some of the larger text was a bit blurry on the Kindle app (but not in Bluefire). Again, this may have been because this was an ARC or it may be because Amazon produced a crappy Kindle app.

Those problems had nothing to do with the idea or the writing, so I'm not worried about them! I consider this a worthy read and I recommend it.

Tovi the Penguin Goes Away for Christmas by Janina Rossiter

Rating: WORTHY!

I've had a mixed relationship with Tovi, but who can resist a good Christmas story? This one was a good one - and had a nice message - that friends are more important than presents, although presents are good too! Tovi and his two friends are evidently quite well-off, because they have a winter retreat they can visit for Xmas. I guess they have a nice income from licensing their image to the Linux people and the Batman franchise...!

The penguins discover on Xmas morning that Santa hasn't delivered any presents! Rather than dissolve into blubbering and inertia, they press on and make a joyous dinner, and play games and have a good old time. When they arrive home, they discover that Santa has indeed paid them a visit - he just didn't know they were away from home. Not only did they have a great time, now they get to open presents. I found this to be a fun story, and with an important message, which is why I'm rating this one a worthy read.

The Awkward Owl by Shawnda Blake

Rating: WORTHY!

Awkward is itself an awkward word with the 'wkw' - I mean how weird is that? The owl was really a turkey vulture (it was all a misunderstanding), but this story isn't awkward at all; it's charming, and it is about an owl - a young one who-who hasn't yet got full control of his faculties. He flies backwards and upside down and bumps into trees while other owls swoop and flutter on silent but deadly wings.

Fortunately there's a little girl who is understanding (and sadly nameless), not critical or fun-poking, and she helps the owl until he can grow a little more and not be the Jar Jar Binks of the owl world. I found the drawings in this story to be a hoot! The tale was amusingly sweet, ruffled no feathers, and was gentle and easy, and full of promise. I recommend this one because it dared to be inventive and different.

Ape House by Sara Gruen

Rating: WARTY!

Read a bit tediously by Paul Boehmer, this novel focuses on bonobos, a great ape species which is very similar to chimpanzees in many ways, very different in others. All of the major great ape species have been taught to communicate in American Sign Language, from Koko the gorilla, to Kanzi the Bonobo, to Chantek the Orangutan. Apes are not the only species with which we’ve communicated. These studies cross a wide range. There are not only chimpanzees, but also elephants, dolphins, and parrots, and dolphins. Although there is controversy around these studies, and even around the study directors, it’s definitely fair to say that animals are way more complex than most humans have typically been willing to credit, and some of them have very advanced intelligence, experiencing emotions as humans do.

In the novel, fictional character Isabel Duncan works with Bonobos and language. She becomes the subject of a newspaper story researched by John Thigpen and two other people from the Philadelphia Inquirer, who visit her one New Year's Day to discuss the Bonobos she works with: Bonzi, Jelani, Lola, Makena, Mbongo , and Sam. Boehmer reads these oddly, and I can’t be sure if this is how the author told him they were pronounced, or if he's making it up and getting it wrong. He pronounces Bonzi as Bon-Zee rather than as Bonsy, and Mbongo as Muh-bongo rather than Um-bongo.

It would be nice to know how they’re supposed to be pronounced and an audio book is the perfect way to do this. Print books and ebooks fail in this regard unless they have a pronunciation guide. It would have also been nice to know what the more obscure names meant, too. All names used to actually mean something, and we’ve lost that. Now people pick names for how they sound, or to honor a relative or a celebrity rather than for how they apply to the child and what they mean. When I come up with character names, I really give some thought to how they should portray the character, and in some books, the names are clues to the characters character or fate - if you can only figure them out! I had particular fun with this in Saurus, one of my favorites.

This story really takes off when there's an explosion at the lab, and the apes end up in a reality TV show. Isabel discovers that in order to fix this, she has to find a way to connect better with humans - something she's not very skilled at. This fictional character seems to be based loosely on the real life, controversial ape language researcher, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. One of the interesting things about these studies, and about great ape research in the wild, is that the big names associated with it always seem to be female. The three best-known names in great ape studies in the wild were women tasked by Louis Leakey to study these apes in the hope that it would throw light on early hominid development, and it has, but these women were also controversial. The best known of them is probably Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees, but almost equally well known was Dian Fossey who studied gorillas and was murdered by gorilla poachers. Much less well known is Birute Galdikas who studied orangutans. The books these three wrote are well-worth reading, as is Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape by Frans de Waal if you want to learn more.

The author, Sara Gruen, studied American Sign language and the symbolic lexigram language the apes use so that she could better understand the bonobos she visited at the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary in Des Moines, Iowa. This is where Kanzi lives. Clearly the author may be writing fiction, even fanciful fiction, but it is grounded in her own personal experiences with real apes. My problem with her writing, however, had to do with how the university responded to the bombing of the lab. It was like they couldn't wash their hands of the apes and of Isabel fast enough, and this seemed completely unrealistic to me. They were, in effect, siding with the terrorists. Never once did they try to correct the insane mis-perception of the purpose of the "lab" - which was language studies, not animal experimentation.

You would think they would be very much concerned about putting their best face before the public, and they didn’t even have to lie about it, yet they failed on an epic level. Never once did they consult with Isabel about the apes' future. I get that the university effectively owned the apes and it was their decision, but I find it hard to believe that any university worth its name would behave so callously and precipitously. I also get that this is a dramatic fiction, but it seemed to me that there were better ways to set this up than to make the university leadership look like spineless jerks. Maybe the author hates universities!

The lot was plodding and predictable, but the worst fail for me, however, was the fact that The main story - about the apes - was repeatedly sidelined by a boring domestic trivia story going on between the other main character, John Thigpen, and his wife Amanda. I could see the author desperately wanted to get John and Isabel together, but why? Why not just make John single? Why include John at all, and thereby make Isabel merely another maiden-in-distress, needing to be rescued by Saint John, a knight in shining armor? It made no sense to me to take the drama away from the apes, and it was yet another insult by a female writer to a female main character.

From a purely narrative PoV, it was really annoying to have to abandon the main story to go off into this boring drama over whether this couple would stay together or over Amanda's and John's spinelessness when confronted with Amanda's domineering and interfering mother. It didn’t even instill any confidence in me that an invertebrate like John could be a heroic man of action when he was such a wallflower, or that he was even heroic at all if he was going to abandon his wife at he drop of an ape. Maybe I got his wrong - as I said, I didn't finish this novel, so maybe it panned out differently; however, it felt like the road most traveled and that's the road least interesting to me, but it was this negation of both Isabel and the apes which was what truly killed this story. I could not finish it, and I cannot recommend it based on what I heard. I haven'tread anything else by this author and now I have no intention of doing so.

Corr Syl The Warrior by Garry Rogers

Rating: WARTY!

I wanted to read this advance review copy because I thought it would be a story very much in the mold of Watership Down which, though it had some issues, I enjoyed and reviewed favorably back in September 2014. This children's novel is nothing like Watership Down. The book is heavy going - there are endless chapters and a foreword, which I skipped. I don't do introductions and forewords - if it's worth saying, it's worth putting in chapter one or later. Once I got into the main story, it was less than thrilling. Maybe young children will like this, but it was hard to tell at which age group this was aimed, and from my own perspective it was not well done.

The ebook version of this novel struck me as in need to some work before it was ready for prime time. I suspect that it failed to weather the transition from original typescript to ebook version, because the formatting was way off. In literally the first four screens, on three occasions, I found text plunked down in the middle of other text where it clearly did not belong. This was the same on the iPad Kindle app as it was on my phone Kindle app, but it was not apparent in Bluefire Reader on the iPad.

On the very first screen, for example, there was a sentence which was evidently intended to read, "...began an imaginary combat exercise." There was also the italicized description of the beginning of the exercise, which started, "The Human assassin ran across the smooth stone with quick, light steps...". In the Kindle app version, these two were interleaved thus: "...and began an imaginary combat The Human assassin ran across the smooth stone with exercise. quick, light steps..." This same problem was extant on almost every screen where italics appeared with regular font text. On the very next screen, the sentence "...reached a conclusion For an instant..." was interspersed with the italicized "Rhya is intentionally avoiding me - does she actually like me?" to become, "...reached a conclusion For Rhya is intentionally avoiding me - does she actually like me?an instant..."

This same thing happened in the intro to part one (the novel is in five parts) giving us this: " dangerous inHistory of the Tsaebdividuals and species appear from time to time, and civilization needs its defenders. Morgan Silverleaf, Librarian of Wycliff". This screwing-up-o'-the-text seems to be quite a common problem with Kindle app versions for some reason. Rather than try to decipher it, I took to skipping those sections. There were other, unrelated issues, such as one part which read, "Addressed to , the letter was an invitation..." and which is obviously missing the addressee's name. This is not a fault with the Kindle app and is something a writer or an editor should have caught. There were also parts where lines of text ended early on one line and resumed on the next. Hopefully all of that will be fixed before this is ever released as a finished work.

The big question with writing a novel like this, where you're humanizing the animals, is how far should you go? If you fail to go far enough, you risk having the animals become unintelligible (in a broad sense), but if you go too far, they're too human and pointless. If all you're doing is putting humans in rabbit clothing, then why bother? You need to have some rabbit in there, otherwise all you have is humans dressed as rabbits, which is sad and boring, if not unintentionally hilarious. The same kind of problem exists when you create aliens for a sci-fi novel. In this case the author has the rabbits indistinguishable from humans except for their whiskers and fur, and this felt like huge fail to me.

Maybe children will go for this, but I doubt mine would. For me personally, it really began to bother me that the animals - not just rabbits, but all animals, were exactly like humans except for the fact that they had an animal shape and animal skin. They behaved, and thought, and spoke, and organized themselves exactly like humans, so I had to wonder what was the point of making them animals? What is it that's new here exactly, if all we essentially have here is weird or mutated-looking humans?

The rabbits evidently live in caves high on a cliff, which made no sense, since this has nothing to do with how rabbits live in real life, so why put them there? If you're going to put your characters there, then why make them rabbits as opposed to mountain goats or sheep, or something?! None of the animals wore clothes, but they seemed obsessed with wearing outrageous hats. I had no idea what was going on there.

These rabbits have some odd and unexplained skills - at least unexplained in the part I read. They have six streams of consciousness, yet nowhere is this apparent in their thinking, at least as far as being conveyed in the text. We're just told this fact and then it's apparently irrelevant after that. Worse than this is that despite being covered in fur, the rabbits blush! Have no idea where that thinking came from - what's the point of a blush response if you have fur? There seems to have been no thought whatsoever given to how these animals evolved in the way they supposedly did. And once again humans are the paragon to which they all have to aspire. Why? Why aim to take the road less traveled if all you're going to do on it is let yourself become mired in tired old ways and habits?

Their thought processes mirrored ours precisely, as I mentioned, even to the point of Corr seeing Rhya as "painfully beautiful" at one point early in the story. So not only do we get humanized animals, we also get them relegating women to pigeon-holes, one labeled 'beautiful' and the other labeled, presumably, 'beastly', because these are the only two categories females can be placed into even if they're rabbits, it would seem. How shallow is that?

I think it's wrong to focus on beauty and treat it like it's all that matters, and it's particularly wrong in a children's book where we need to avoid setting these absurd 'standards' most of all. Rhya was dancing at the time, so could we not have described her as skilled, or graceful, or daring, or something other than beautiful? Or at least qualified it by saying that she moved beautifully if that was what was meant? I think it's entirely the wrong message to send to children, and it was at this point that I decided I could better spend my time pursuing other stories. I can't recommend this one based on what I read.

Urchin of the Riding Stars - The Mistmantle Chronicles by MI McAllister

Rating: WORTHY!

Normally I avoid like the plague novels with the word 'chronicles' (or 'cycle' or 'saga', etc.) in the title, but in children's stories, these words are more often not indicative of a pretentious and overblown story. This one sounded like it might be fun when I saw it in the library, and I was enamored of the first few tracks on the disk, listening as I drove in to work the next morning. It was well-written, and beautifully read, and was reminiscent of Phillip Pullman's writing. This is the start of a series of novels in this world.

I normally don't think actors are particularly good at reading stories, but in this case, the reader was Andrew Sachs, who I really like. He learned English as a second language and you may remember him from John Cleese's Fawlty Towers TV show. He was the hapless general dogsbody known as Manuel (he's from Barcelona). His voice in this novel is amazing, and he did an awesome job of reading. This story is advertised as being the squirrel version of "Watership Down" relating a tale of squirrels, moles, otters, and hedgehogs who live on the fog-shrouded island of Mistmantle, which no one but a rare and lucky ship can find. No word yet on whether King Kong is in residence there. Frankly, It didn't sound very much like Watership Down to me, but it is from a similar mold. It seemed to me to bear more relation to Lord of the Rings than ever it did to Watership Down which I've also reviewed

Urchin is a bit of a double-, if not a triple-, foundling. His mother snuck aboard one of the rare ships to find Mistmantle, knowing if she could reach it, it would be a safe haven for her newborn. She was wrong as it happened. She died after she had given birth to him, and by a strange series of events, Urchin (so-named because he was found near the ocean), was adopted by this community despite him being a very pale color for a red squirrel (no, he's not pink, but then red squirrels aren't really red!). His adoption may have been aided somewhat by the fact that he arrived on the night of the riding stars - a meteor shower, which is seen as an auspicious festival time amongst the Mistmantle community. It appeared to them that the squirrel had arrived on one of those 'stars', but until he matured and became ready to start work in the community, unloading ships, he wasn't told of his origin.

Urchin's idol is Captain Crispin, who unexpectedly appoints Urchin as his number two, saving him from every-day drudgery, but just as life seems to be looking up for our bushy-tailed bushido, it quickly becomes clear that things are not right in the Mistmantle world. The beneficent rule of King Brushen and Queen Spindle is no longer the carefree one it used to be. There is evil abroad - well actually not abroad, but right there in the court! The newborn prince is murdered, the loyal Crispin is accused and exiled, yet it seems it was at the hands of Lord Husk and Lady Aspen, in a plan to take over the kingdom, that this evil was unleashed. Are these villains blind to the strength of this community, and to ancient prophecies? Urchin discovers he must tread carefully and watch his own back as he tries to unravel what happened and tries to help the last remaining loyal captain to restore the kingdom.

This was a great story, full of inventiveness and strong character portrayals. I wasn't sure about the wine being introduced into a children's story, even though there was a reason for it, but then we have sword-fighting otters and talking squirrels, so why not? Minor quibbles like that aside, this was a very worthy, well-told and well-read tale and I recommend it.

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Title: Just So Stories
Author: Rudyard Kipling
Publisher: Tower Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

Read by 2011 Best Voice in children and family listening: Jim Weiss

I always associate these stories with Watership Down which I reviewed in September. The two have nothing in common (other than that they're charming stories about animals), except that I associate them because they were both given to me as a birthday gift a long time ago (Thanks Ruth!). I have to say that these are hugely entertaining (not all of them, I found a couple to be a bit boring), and in large part I have to ascribe this not only to Kipling, but also to the reader of the audio book, Jim Weiss, who went way above and beyond the call of duty in relating these tales! Now that's what I call a performance!

Just So Stories was first published in 1902 and is remarkable for how well it’s aged. These children's stories sound just as good today as they no doubt did then and even before then, when Kipling's nurses told them to him as a child. Kipling won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1907 and is still the youngest recipient to receive it, as well as being the very first English language recipient of it.

The essence of these stories is the fantastical; they're completely absurd tales about how various animals (and human animals are the subject of three stories) got to be the way they are today. There are twelve stories in all in the volume to which I had access to; the original publication, however, had one more story: The Tabu Tale, which according to wikipedia is missing from most British editions of these stories (as well as mine!). Why, I do not know, but it's another story about Taffimai, and you can read it here at wikisource, Best Beloved.

How the Camel Got His Hump relates that the camel was the most idle creature in all creation until the dog and the ox and others complained, whereupon the creator Djin resorted to ordering it to work, and giving it a hump of food so it had no excuse to stop for a meal break.

How the Rhinoceros got his Skin is a ridiculous story relating how the Rhino was perfectly ordinary but rather kleptomaniacal, and ended up with a disheveled-looking skin because it stole a cake, and the victim garnered revenge by filling the Rhino's skin (when he took it off to go for a swim) with cake crumbs, causing all kinds of unrelieved itchiness when the Rhino put it back on again, later.

How the Leopard Got His Spots is as a result of their being really poor at hunting zebras and giraffes when the latter two got their spots and stripes and became so well hidden. The answer lies with an Ethiopian who was friends with the leopard and suffered an equal lack of hunting success.

How the Elephant got his Trunk. The answer to this lies with a very curious elephant child and a rather feisty crocodile. Perhaps you can fill in the blanks, but maybe not as well as Kipling did.

The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo tells us how this antipodean animal came to have such a weird appearance and such a rare (among tetrapods) method of locomotion. There's a dingo involved. But isn't there always? The moral of this story is: don’t ask to be much sought after….

The Beginning of the Armadillos is a story about a hedgehog and a tortoise. No really….

How the First Letter Was Written brings us into acquaintanceship with the young and opinionated Taffimai Metallumai - a real charmer who almost foments a war.

How the Alphabet Was Made us a follow-up to the previous tale, with the same female main character.

The Crab That Played with the Sea explains why we have tides (it has to do with the living circumstances of a rather crabby character).

The Cat That Walked by Himself is a longest story, and it explains how cats came to be cats, which might be why I found this a bit tedious. Cats are way overrated!

The Butterfly That Stamped is about Sulaimon bin Daoud and his 999 wives. Apparently there's a problem with his domestic circumstances.

I recommend this - especially the audiobook. This and Libba Bray's Beauty Queens are books, I feel, that are actually better heard than read