Note: The title of this book and series have been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers. The original title reads Die schwarze Tigerin from the Das Geheime Leben der Tiere: Dschungel series. The book is currently not available in English (yet).
Another book in this series I'm reviewing! Per usual, here's your reminder that this is an anthology series where each book can be read separately, so while I haven't reviewed book number one in the Jungle series I can still read book two and not be lost or anything. Spoilers ahead.
Lakshmi is a young pseudomelanistic tigress who grew up in captivity. One day she escapes into the jungle, and she now has to learn how to survive there. And she has a lot to learn, leading to the local animals seeing her as a bit of an oddball. She befriends a monitor lizard named Bengal who decides to show her how to survive in the wild. However, Lakshmi ends up making enemies out of Raja, the local tiger ruling the jungle. To make things worse, humans are trying to chop down the jungle in order to start a plantation for teak trees. Lakshmi might just turn out to be the one to turn the tide in this conflict.
It's a fine, cute book. I've said before about other books in this series that they're usually nothing special, but they are simple and wholesome and oftentimes have a slight educational element to them for the younger readers. And the same applies for the most part to this book here as well.
I do have to say that the educational part regarding animal behavior is kind of gone in this book, while it was present in the others I've reviewed. Sure, those books took some liberties with the animal behavior, but overall it still portrayed the species rather realistically. Here, that aspect is kind of just thrown out the window as Lakshmi does all sorts of silly things a real tiger, even one raised in captivity, wouldn't be doing. Nothing too over the top, but enough for me to say "okay, they didn't try to stick very close to the real animal's behavior here". Instead, this book's educational aspect is more so about the central conflict: the chopping down of rain forests to make room for plantations and farmland. Which is also a fine thing to educate about, don't get me wrong, but the previous books in this series I've read always made sure to stay pretty close to the real-life behaviors of the animals, so it was a bit sad to see that aspect ignored here.
This book also feels a bit more juvenile than the others, again largely because of Lakshmi acting a bit goofy in the first part, but also because it just seems a bit more fantastical. There are literal scenes of animals talking to humans and vice versa in this, which isn't something you'd really find in the other books in the series I've read so far. The way the final conflict was resolved was, while inventive, also a bit too positive because we all know that in real life greedy humans won't just stop chopping down the rain forest just because some animals protested and some of them think the goddess Kali is angry with them. But since this is a book series for younger children I can see why things have been simplified a bit. It's not a bad way to resolve the conflict, but if you're an older reader it does feel a bit simplistic and black-and-white. But again since I'm not the target audience I won't hold this against the book or anything. It's still a fine way to resolve the book.
So yeah, overall a bit of a different book than the others I've read in this series so far, with the slightly more juvenile tone and less focus on realistic animal behavior, but it's still pretty good. I can see some older readers being put off by the simplicity, but if you just want a cute xenofiction about a tigress finding her footing in the jungle and fighting against deforestation it's totally serviceable.
Rating: 3.5/5
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