Review: ABAYOMI, THE BRAZILIAN PUMA

Dar­cy Pat­ti­son and Kit­ty Harvill have teamed up again, and I could­n’t be hap­pi­er with the result. You might remem­ber when I reviewed their pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion, WISDOM, THE MIDWAY ALBATROSS, here.
Unlike Wis­dom, the main char­ac­ter in ABAYOMI,  THE BRAZILIAN PUMA, is a mam­mal, a feline, not a bird. Unlike Wis­dom, Abay­o­mi lives in South Amer­i­ca, in Brazil, not on an island in the North Pacif­ic Ocean. Unlike Wis­dom, Abay­o­mi is a baby, an orphan, not a wise, old moth­er. Yet their sto­ries have much in common.
Like WISDOM, ABAYOMI, is a “biog­ra­phy in text and art” of a spe­cif­ic wild ani­mal whose life has inter­sect­ed with human beings in an unusu­al and inter­est­ing way. Like Wis­dom, Abay­o­mi is affect­ed both pos­i­tive­ly and neg­a­tive­ly by the actions of humans. Like WISDOM, both Dar­cy and Kit­ty have done their research and ground­ed the ABAYOMI sto­ry in the sci­en­tif­ic real­i­ty behind it. Like WISDOM, ABAYOMI has a com­pelling sto­ry arc, well-craft­ed text, and stun­ning art­work. Also like Wis­dom, Abay­omi’s sto­ry is not yet over: the open end­ings entice read­ers to keep think­ing about these sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ters and the plights they find them­selves in for a long time after the book has been closed.
You can read more about the sto­ry behind the Abay­o­mi sto­ry in an inter­view Dar­cy did with author Nan­cy Castal­do, here.

(Disclaimer: The author provided me with a review copy in exchange for a fair review.)