Zara's Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa (Hardcover)

by Peter Beard (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Beard's memoir, dedicated to his daughter, Zara, has the delicious suspense of a tale told to a child—one who knows the teller escaped to tell his story. An adventurer with a conservationist's calling (preserving East Africa's wildlife) and a photographer's craft, Beard captures "the old world, the wild life, the wild animals, and the wonderful things we may or may not have left behind" with words and pictures (some photographs, some drawings and lots of "dawdles and dipsy doodles"). Monster lions offer "a midnight fright-night incident so dark and sudden I can only tell it to Zara in the daytime," and a large crocodile takes up residence at a camp site. There are moments of quiet beauty, as when "a family of giraffes float past our open tents like shimmering ghosts in the moonlight," and wild days with "the most eccentric local animal trapper in the history of this eccentric calling." Occasionally Beard meditates on life or remonstrates on the factors threatening it. The bongos Beard captures on film and the elephants he does not manage to outrun hold the book's center. Although Beard's adventures abound, at heart this is a father's memoir for his daughter. Composed with a writer's ear and a photographer's eye, this is a book to share, something for both the young Zaras and the sophisticated Peters. 145 illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
An animal-loving New Yorker, Beard lost his heart to Africa as a boy. He acquired 40 acres adjacent to Karen Blixen's Kenyan coffee plantation, and soon devoted himself to photographing wildlife and assisting in conservation efforts. It's been a long time since Beard last produced a book, and this is a gem. Writing with both tough-guy nonchalance and contemplative lyricism, he recounts the true-life adventure tales he often told his daughter, Zara, when she was a young girl enamored of Thaka, an enormous warthog who became a favorite pet. Handsomely illustrated with Beard's photographs, these captivating and hair-raising escapades date back decades to the days when lions strolled through Nairobi, and Beard and his intrepid cohorts risked life and limb to capture mighty rhinos and gigantic Nile crocodiles. He has survived a near drowning, the charge of a lion, and, most traumatically, an elephant attack, brushes with death that have made life all the more precious to him. At once dashing and philosophical, Beard celebrates the astonishments of nature, and expresses hope that we'll figure out how to live in harmony with what little wildlife still graces the planet. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (November 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679426590
• ISBN-13: 978-0679426592
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #441,080 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Landscape: CLOSED, December 31, 2004

By	J. E. Barnes (Bayridge, Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Renowned photographer Peter Beard's Zara's Tales (2004), a book of airy African anecdotes ostensibly written for Beard's young daughter, is clearly intended for "children of all ages," but its best audience will probably be found among adolescents with an interest in the exotic and a talent for discerning the wheat from the chafe.

Unattractively, the narrative is reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne at his worst in both style and tone, being by turns smug, sardonic, condescending, patronizing, and both mocking and self-parodying. The overall impression the text leaves is that there is very little actual content to Zara's Tales, and what little exists is buried under the author's labored and indulgent prose.

The book is also overloaded at every turn with whimsical baby talk that frequently approaches high camp: a half page of text about a young rhino offers readers expressions like "delicious yum-yums," "spoiled brats," "bouncy baby," "tooth-some sweets," and "bonbon handouts." Not even young children will find this phraseology less than cloying.

Such language is in doubly poor taste since the brief story concludes with the rhino biting off the finger of a "neophyte ranger," while Beard's friend and comrade, Ken Randall, who Beard refers to as "a lunatic," rolls on the ground, "shaking and gasping, tears of laughter streaming down his face." In fact, there's little point to the anecdote except that Randall finds the tragic accident hilarious, a message many parents and educators will probably find revolting.

A photo montage of dead and decaying elephant corpses, reprinted from Beard's The End of the Game (1965), while obliquely underscoring the plight of African wildlife, only further throws into question exactly what audience Zara's Tales is intended for.

The book is physically handsome, but suffers slightly from being over-decorated in Beard's crowded, sentimental style. The author's photographs of the African landscape, peoples, and wildlife are entrancing and dramatic in most cases, and thus deserve finer narrative support than the thin, disappointing text provides. By the last chapter, the book suggests nothing so much as a private family project that has somehow found its way into the public market; many adults mistakenly believe their personal family musings have a broader objective appeal, and Zara's Tales, like a cartridge of tedious holiday slides, is no exception.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars bruised and flawed; but poignant and accomplished, July 9, 2007

By	Author Brian Wallace (Mind Transmission, Inc.) (Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Unlike other reviewers of this work, I found the book to be an interesting and poignant offering from a man known mainly as an adventurer/photographer/artist - not a literary guru. I'd rather read the imperfect but insightful works of an iconoclast who offers his uncensored impressions of an exotic land than some polished, politically correct and literary highbrow piece. Whether you are into his insightful and colorful words, his stunning and captivating images, or neither one, one is easily awed at the accomplishment of bringing so much attention to this land.

Peter Beard is one-of-a-kind, and this little controversial book is merely one among many of his works that manage to successfully step outside of the mainstream; and deftly merge artistic sensibility (and a unique vision for beauty) with raw, edgy curiosity about life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Zara's Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa, March 30, 2008

By	Safari Sweetheart (Denver, Co) - See all my reviews

This book is a fantastic journey and inspires the adventuresome spirit. A beautiful sharing of a unique life.