Customer Reviews

The White Giraffe

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have to admit, I was first attracted to this book because of it's beautiful cover. After reading the first chapter, I was completely hooked. It's a wonderful story about a girl named Martine who, after the loss of her parents, must move to a wildlife park in Africa. The story focuses on a mysterious white giraffe who is only rumored to exist in the park. Lauren St. John also adds themes of family and friendship to this novel. Beautiful and descriptive language make this a great read, both for adults and children.

My daughter says: This is the best book she's ever read. She thought it was extremely exciting, and she loved the cliff hangers at the end of some chapters. She told us about what she read each day over dinner each night, and it sounded quite intriguing. She asked me to write a review, and to make sure it was five stars. We hope your children enjoy it as much!

What a wonderful story. For ages approx. 8+ but I thoroughly enjoyed it as an adult too!

This is the story of Martine. She's 11 years old when her parents are killed and she's sent to live in Africa with her only living relative, her grandmother. Her grandmother doesn't seem to be all that pleased to see her, but Martine soon finds the delights of living at Sawubona, a game reserve, compensate for her grandmother's strangeness. All the same, Martine wonders what makes her grandmother act so strangely... what is she hiding from Martine? Martine not only has the difficulty of being without her parents in a foreign country, but the challenge of starting at a new school too. Can she befriend the quiet boy, Ben, who sits all alone at break time and doesn't ever speak? Back in the wilderness, is there such a creature as the 'white giraffe' or is it just a mythical African story?

This is a lovely, magical story, full of the warmth, mysticism and ruggedness of rural Africa. Really well-written, and with simple yet effective black and white illustrations to help bring the pages alive. I can highly recommend it.

My daughter (11) and I LOVED this book. It was so compelling, so well-written and well-researched, and the plot, storyline and characters were not only incredibly well-crafted, but while they seem to be drawn from every great children's story (reminiscent of Secret Garden and Whale Rider, especially) they were also refreshingly new. And it also still seems a rarity to find a book that is exciting and doesn't talk down to children nor expect too much of them emotionally (this book has tragedy, terror but the author handles both in a way that somehow did not upset or scare my child.) We also love books about Africa and loved St. John's portrayal of South Africa, its people, landscape and wildlife. I'm grateful that someone recommended this book to us for our mother-daughter book club because I'd never heard of the book or author before. Both of us are excited to read her next book and hope St. John keeps writing.

(Also, we were traveling and alternated between reading the book and listening to the audio CDs we'd found in our library -- the narrator does a fantastic job with the voices and the audio is the original British version, so my daughter (who read along with the CD) noticed a lot of interesting Americanizations in the book.)

this is the most amazing book iv'e ever read with all the detail there is so many rules it is unbelivable, so far i am on chapter 9 and it is great you are a great writer thanks for making the book

It's true that it is hard to resist the cover. All the rest of the wonderful black and white illustrations by David Dean are also delightful, but the book also is paced well, has fun characters, and the appeal of animals and foreign places. The best part for me is that the setting rings true; it sounds like the author knows what she's talking about and loves sharing it with her audience. She does mention some of the social issues in South Africa, but since that is not the intent of the book, she doesn't dwell on them. The book isn't aimed at young adults; it's a children's book so the plot is fairly simple but nonetheless enjoyable for all ages. I'm looking forward to future journeys with St. John's colorful settings, whimsical fantasy, and endearing animals.

I was at an ALA Conference skimming through the convention center when I stumbled across the Dial booth. I was a little too late to get the hottest galleys that day, but a person can still root out a hidden gem here and there if they've a yen to. I think it may have been the cover of "The White Giraffe" that caught my eye first. Deep blues with a pale ghostly giraffe obviously reflecting the moonlight off its hide. I'm not usually drawn to animal stories but there was something deeply compelling about the image I saw here. "Is this any good?," I asked the clearly exhausted Dial employee. To the best of her ability she assured me that it was a worthwhile read, so I took it home. So here's where it becomes awkward. It may well be that in the future this is a much beloved title that no one disputes as distilled genius in a glass. Maybe. But as far as I could tell, author Lauren St. Johnhasn 't quite yet gotten a feel for how to write for a young audience. There are things in this book that work, but by and large they're outweighed by the sheer mass of the things that do not. A good start, but a book that could have stood a little more editing

When eleven-year-old Martine's parents die in an accidental fire, she finds herself bundled away from England and sent to live with her grandmother in Africa. And that might have been fine except for the fact that it's obvious right from the start that Martine is not wanted by this unfamiliar relative. Lonely in a strange new land, one night the girl spots a white giraffe in the moonlight. And unaware of a legend that speaks of a girl who will someday ride such an animal, Martine begins to fall in love with her new home. Yet poachers are invading Martine 's grandmother's land and Jemmy, the beautiful white giraffe, is almost certainly in danger. It will take all the girl's strength and resilience to discover who the traitor on the reserve is and, when the time comes, realize how to rescue Jemmy.

Now it's clear that St. John's a writer through and through. Listen to this line: "Pale spiky thorn trees and ragged shrubs dotted the long yellow grass, which glowed beneath the blazing summer sun as if it was lit from underneath." THAT is how you write a sentence. THAT is how it is done. Food too is described deliciously as "omlettes made from fresh farm eggs and wild mushrooms, a heap of crispy bacon, and tomatoes fried with brown sugar." A human being could subsist on these words alone if you let them. So imagine my distress when on the next page the resident magical black friend puts her hand on our heroine's forehead and says, "You have the gift,chile . . . Jus' like the forefathers said." Even if you take away the whole white-girl-is-going-to-save-us-all idea, surely there was a better way to introduce that idea.

All right. So maybe some of my objection to this title is rooted in its basic premise. White girl goes to Africa and connects with a magical creature there better than any actual African could because she is "the one". So how much does Martine's race really matter? I read the first chapter or so of "The White Giraffe" after reading the bookflap , secure in the belief that my heroine was black. When it turned out that she was not, the entire reading experience took a shift to the left. I had been enjoying the book, you know. As first chapters go, I may have to nominate "The White Giraffe" for Most Gripping Opening of 2007. It's thrilling in the best sense of the word. So do we blame a book for putting a European lady in an African setting? Not a bit of it. But when it's clear that there are legends built around Martine, that's when things start to get uncomfortable. I mean, just for argument's sake, would it have been so bad if Martine had been black? It's not like we're swimming in black heroines in children's books these days anyway (and certainly not in fantasy).

There were other issues, I suppose. Martine is eleven but in terms of basic ideas like racism she resembles a six or seven-year-old more. That means that you get passages where apartheid gets a brief glossed over mention without much meat or heft to it. There are small plot gaps as well. Martine doesn't tell her grandmother about her gamekeeper's unnatural violence because Tendai "didn't want to distress her unnecessarily." It's a literary device that's as unnecessary as it is frustrating. Like those movies where the characters won't call the cops, even when the homicidal maniac is threatening them with a machete. Heck, when Martine's grandmother, a woman who (we later find) would protect her granddaughter with her life, allows Martine to go BACK into the super scary ship full of bad guys with guns there is just no good reason for it. No sane guardian would let their kid do that. And there are other moments of sheer coincidence. Grace, a holy woman, spontaneously appears in Martine 's secret alcove at just the right moment. You know Ms. St. John must have felt some slight awkwardness with moments like this. After all the book even says, "Martine was still reeling from the bombshell of finding the woman she'd wanted to see, here, in this sacred space." You me both, hon.

But did I mention that the writing was sometimes great? That a giraffe's eyes are described as the wisest and "most innocent" in the world? And I liked Martine 's dreams and the subplot that involves some mean kids in her school. It's the details and the idea of a white gal being the savior of Africa that gives me the willies. I look forward to what St. John puts out in the future. A memorable read, but it could definitely have been stronger.

I have never read anything else by this author so i can't say that i love all her books, but i will try to get more by this author after reading The White Giraffe. Lauren St.John did an amazing job of writing this book. It was so good I couldn't put it down! I didn't even get up to go to the bathroom!

Martine Allen turns eleven the night a fire killed her parents, and she herself barly got out. Now she has to go to Africa to live with a grandma she didn't know about. When she arrives she hears people talking about a mythical white giraffe. Everyone insists it's a legend, but on a stormy night she looks out her window and looks straight into the eyes of a tall and silvery animal. But when she hers of poachers prowling on her grandma's reserve, she gets herself into trouble. What will happen to Martine? You'll have to read to find out!

Theres also a sequel so be checking the libraries and book stores!

When I saw the cover I thought wow this one's gotta be good. Well, don't judge a book by it's cover. I thought the beginning was brilliant and so was the ending. However, the middle was painfully boring and exasperatingly tedious. I had to force myself to keep reading, and I did because I read a summary of the second book and thought it sounded good. Don't do what I did. Just skip to the sequel, it explains basically everything that happended in the first book. The beginning and ending don't make up for the horrible middle, so, all in all, the most disappointing book I've ever read.

The White Giraffe is a book about a girl named Martine who must live with her grandmother in Africa following the death of her parents on her eleventh birthday. Through this experience, Martine learns courage, compassion and loyalty through her friendship with a white giraffe, Jemmy. Martine must use all her new abilities to save the white giraffe at the end of the book.

Martine learned courage during her time in Africa by going out at night in the dangerous wildlife preserve to see Jemmy. She had to overcome her fears and visit Jemmy at night to protect from being seen by poachers. At the end of the book Martine used courage to save Jemmy when Alex stole the giraffe. Alex put Jemmy on a ship to sell her for money. Martine bravely goes to the ship and saves the white giraffe.

Martine demonstrated compassion for animals for the first time while with her Grandmother, Gwyn Thomas, in Africa. While at school, her classmates were teasing a goose. She told the other children to stop and protected the goose. She then used her special powers to heal the goose, as she had dreamed about earlier in the book. Martine again uses her compassion and special powers to heal Jemmy when Jemmy is injured by the poachers.

Martine learned loyalty through Jemmy's loyalty toward her. Jemmy demonstrated loyalty by coming to her at night when she blew the dog whistle. This showed that Jemmy truly trusted Martine and believed that Martine was her friend. Martine used this newly learned loyalty by doing what was best for Jemmy and letting her be free at the end of the book.

This was a very good book because it showed the value of friendship and how friends can learn valuable lessons from each other. It also showed how friends stand by each other during times of trouble. Martine learned the new abilities of courage, compassion and loyalty by her time in Africa with her new friend Jemmy. Later in the story these same traits were used by Martine to save Jemmy. These are valuable lessons for all children to learn.