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Reviewed by:
  • A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz
  • Jeannette Hulick
Rabinowitz, Alan. A Boy and a Jaguar; illus. by Cátia Chien. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. [32p] ISBN 978-0-547-87507-1 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R 6-9 yrs.

In this picture-book memoir, the narrator describes his painful childhood difficulties with stuttering and the release he discovered through his relationships with both pets and zoo animals, to which he could talk with ease. As Rabinowitz becomes an adult, he learns ways to reduce his stuttering and begins to study wildlife, beginning [End Page 591] with black bears and moving on to jaguars. A test of his speaking abilities comes when he is given only fifteen minutes to try to convince the government of Belize to create a jaguar sanctuary—and succeeds. Upon returning to the jungle, he follows the tracks of an exceptionally large jaguar, only to find that the jaguar is in turn following him: “I know I should feel frightened, but I squat down and look into the jaguar’s eyes. . . . In this animal’s eyes are strength and power and sureness of purpose.” The measured narration and the brevity of the text give powerful weight to the author’s words, and while an author’s note would have been useful to explain some details, these gaps may well prompt kids to Google Rabinowitz to learn more about him and his work. Chien’s acrylic and charcoal pencil illustrations skillfully use color and perspective to add further emotional depth to the text (the stuttering boy clutches his throat in a tight window of white space against a mottled crimson background, for example), and there is a slight resemblance to the art of G. Brian Karas in some of the figures and compositions. Kids with speech issues, and those who bond with animals more easily than with fellow humans, will especially relate to Rabinowitz’s emotionally honest narrative.

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