Into That Forest

Gr 8 Up—Seventy-six-year-old Hannah narrates this unusual tale about her childhood in the Tasmanian bush country. Her parents take her and their neighbor's daughter, Becky, on a picnic. A sudden storm strikes and they are swept into the flooding river. Hannah's parents are lost and the girls land stranded, battered, and disoriented on the shore. They find themselves under the careful watch of a tigress. The tigress and her mate-who recently lost their kits-foster the children, unemotionally but intentionally nudging the girls to survival. Six-year-old Hannah bonds with them and quickly abandons her civilized human traits. Becky is repulsed and resistant, but she, too, eventually adapts to the natural ways of existing in the wild. Their experience is rich with the raw details of clawing out a primitive existence. It is at once fascinating and unnerving; it's intriguing to watch how two youngsters absorb the instinctive ways of their foster parents, and unnerving because of the ever-lurking bounty hunter who wants to kill the tigers. Finally, Becky's father, obsessed with rescuing them, tracks the girls down after four years, but ironically does harm in the end. From the onset, Hannah's vibrant memories, told in her flow of Pidgin English, infuse her tale with cultural and epic flair. Readers are transported beyond the confines of civilized behavior into the primal and visceral Tasmanian bush by Nowra's vivid storytelling. Hannah's narrative wanders off track at times, and there are a few violent scenes, but commitment to following through will result in a tense and thought-provoking read.—Alison Follos, formerly at North Country School, Lake Placid, NY