PakaMdogo Press
3rd book is the series
These stories feature a clever black and white cat named Sheena, who goes on adventures with her family the Allens.
In this story she stows away as they enter a new section of the Baragandiri National Park. Sheena has her own adventure as she helps a young meerkat that has been poisoned by a scorpion. She ends up making friends with his whole meerkat tribe and learns that they are at war with another meerkat tribe that lives on the other side of the gorge. The whole issue is which tribe lives under the “one true sun”. Sheena goes on quite a journey as she tries to bring these two meerkat tribes together.
Dollycas’s Thoughts
This was quite a story. I enjoyed it and I think older kids through seniors citizens would enjoy it as well. There is a bit of death and scary things that would keep me from reading or recommending it to younger readers although my grandson loved the pictures on the back cover and wanted to know about the animals.
The book seems to have been extremely well researched and actually had me studying about the amazing creatures in this book after I finished the story. I think it would be a great book to add to middle school, junior high or high school reading lists as it covers many subjects, from geography to science, and has a good message about relating to others believe differently than you and getting along with everyone. The sketches in the book are wonderful as well.
This is my first adventure with Sheena and I will be picking up the first two and reading along as the series continues.
About This Author (from Amazon)
H. S. Toshack has lived and worked as an English teacher and educational consultant in the UK, the Caribbean, Africa, Thailand and the Middle East. He now lives and writes in Portugal…and travels, still.
His Paka Mdogo stories are set in Africa, but they are coloured by his experience of people, and lives lived, in all of those other places; and he intends to take his cat heroine Sheena, in future books, to some of them (perhaps Thailand next).
‘Or rather,’ he says, ‘I’ll let her take me. She led me through the first three books, after all. It was as if she was telling her stories through me. She’s my co-author.’
All three books are published in the UK, and ‘The Meerkat Wars’ has just been launched in the US.
A link to the Paka Mdogo teaching and learning resources, which may be of interest to teachers and parents, and even young readers who want to think further, and write, about what they’ve read: http://www.litworks.com/childrens.php
A link to a list of H. S. Toshack’s writing to date: http://www.jacketflap.com/hst
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from The Cadence Group. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of this book. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”