Today's book 07/16/2013

• Schrefer, Eliot. ENDANGERED

  Schrefer, Eliot. ENDANGERED New York : Scholastic, 2012 IL YA ISBN 0545165768 Fourteen-year-old Sophie rescues Otto, a young bonobo chimp, from an animal trader while spending the summer at her mother's bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Otto is in bad shape, malnourished and beaten and missing two fingers. --The locals are superstitious, her mother explains - “Soup with a bonobo finger in it is supposed to make a pregnant woman give birth to a strong baby. Putting another finger in the bathwater keeps the baby strong.”Despite her mother’s scolding for encouraging the animal trader with the purchase, Sophie pledges to nurse Otto back to health. Bonobos share 98.7% of human DNA and like human babies, bonobo babies bond with their mother.While Sophie’s mother is on a research trip, the President is assassinated and war breaks out. Sophie has a chance to return home to her father in the United States but can’t bear to leave Otto. Instead, she runs. She and Otto escape into the bonobo enclosure. Trapped between the rebel soldiers and the wild bonobos, Sophie must find her way across the jungle to find her mother... (New Hampshire Isinglass Teen Book Award, 2014)

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