Author: Louise Lintvelt
Publisher: Amazon
Illustrated by Julie Sneeden.
Today is spotty day! I review two books by two authors, and I'm afraid I didn't find either of them worthy!
As I said in the other review, I hold children's books less accountable than I do those aimed at older readers - not in quality, but in what I'm willing let the author get away with. This doesn't mean that there's no limit to how generous I'm willing to be with praise and ratings. I like to support new authors, especially of children's books, but they need to do something for me in return, namely to create books which look like they're offering something worthy - preferably something educational or at least a lot of fun.
I can't say that this book offers that and moreover, for a book set in the wilds of Africa, it's illustrated tamely. Children deserve the very best we can give them whether it be attention, education, love, or books, and when I feel that they're being short-changed, I have to take a stand against it!
This is the story of Andrew the baby giraffe. Unlike Dalmatians, the subject of the other book I reviewed, Giraffes are born with their distinctive marking in place. You could also argue that, contrary to this book's title, they don't really have spots. They do have gorgeous patterned and dappled camouflage, which not only identifies their sub-species, and thereby from which corner of Africa they hale, but also, individual giraffe markings are as distinctive as fingerprints. The problem is that it's far too hard to get a giraffe to roll on an ink-pad, so I can't prove this to you....
Andrew seems to have dropped on his head at birth (which is perfectly normal for a giraffe, as it happens) without his markings, and he's now concerned about what happened to them. It's funny to me that the title of this book would have been more appropriately applied to the other book and the title of the other book better applied here.
One of the things which really bothered me about this story, aside from it once again being about a boy - like girls never have any adventures or problems to solve - is that it's set in one of the most attractive and exotic locales in the world, yet all we get here is the mundane. His name is Andrew, which is Greek, not African. it gets worse.
Andrew sets off on a little quest to try and figure out where his spots are. He talks to a ladybug who tells him that Mary the Fairy handed out kisses which became the spots. My only problem with this is that Mary was white, so it's like we're being told that only the white folks can rescue the black ones. We all know from history where that lead, don't we? It's not called the missionary position for nothing. It means you're being screwed. Could we not have had a black fairy in Africa?
Andrew continues on and chats with a leopard (no Rudyard Kipling explanation here!), and an owl and ends up getting his "spots" in a way not entirely divorced from the true purpose of the markings, so that wasn't too bad. That said, however, I can't recommend this story because it really lacked inspiration and made too many faux pas on the way through the jungle out there, so while I have to mark it down for that, I can say it didn't make my skin crawl....
