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  • Blue Iguana by Wendy Townsend
  • Amy Atkinson
Townsend, Wendy. Blue Iguana. Namelos, 2014. 177p. ISBN 978-1-60898-157-1 $18.95    R Gr. 7–12.

High school junior Clarice has an intense affinity with animals, experiencing palpable sympathy pains that hamper her own ability to fully function. Passionate and hardworking but struggling academically, she knows she needs direction for life after graduation. When her guidance counselor suggests she spend her summer away from Pennsylvania working to help animals, Clarice finds herself at the Blue Iguana Recovery Program (BIRP) in the Grand Cayman Islands, where she feeds and cares for the iguanas at the sanctuary and lends her keen observation skills to field research. As she learns what she is capable of—whether driving a car despite her fear of harming something or controlling her hurt and anger upon seeing injured animals—she also begins to see the difference between compromise and defeat. Through tight, measured prose and well-paced plotting, Townsend skillfully tells the story of a highly sensitive and impassioned teen struggling to reconcile her credibly intense emotions with a need to make her way in life. Informative and well-researched details about blue iguanas are intellectually and emotionally compelling, bonding the reader to both the animals and to Clarice in her devotion. Clarice is a heroine of exceptional quality, a young woman who wades through her plaguing self-doubts and reaches the other side, recognizing her personal challenges but ultimately refusing to let them limit her. Her sensitivity is intense but not maudlin, while her dedication is honest and self-respecting; though she’s not immune to the hints of romance with a local marine biology student, her priorities are to help the iguanas as she figures out herself and her place in the world—and she does, in an ending that leaves the reader glad to know she’s out there. Give this to a fan of Schrefer’s Endangered (BCCB 1/13), an animal lover, or a sensitive soul looking to find her way. An author’s note about the real BIRP is included.

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