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The Klampie Mystery Reviewed By Conny Crisalli of Bookpleasures.com
- By Conny Withay
- Published June 15, 2012
- Childrens & Young Adults
Conny Withay
Reviewer Conny Withay:Operating her own business in office management since 1991, Conny is an avid reader and volunteers with the elderly playing her designed The Write Word Game. A cum laude graduate with a degree in art living in the Pacific Northwest, she is married with two sons, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren.
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Author: Luis Rodriguez
Publisher: Mascot Books
ISBN: 13: 978-1-62086-031-1
Luis Rodriguez, director
of a child care center in New Jersey, not only wrote but also
co-illustrated a wonderful children’s book called The Klampie
Mystery, about an Australian koala that befriends a young girl named
Samantha.
This thirty two page hard-bound book has a glossy
front jacket cover of a young girl talking expressively to a koala
with five colorful scenes from the book and a paragraph about its
description on the back. Both inside jacket covers depict an airplane
flying from San Diego, California to Sydney, Australia and back. The
first page has a photograph of a koala and small narrative along with
a small author biography. The font is large and easy to decipher and
there were no grammatical or typographical errors noticed. The
pictures are easy to understand and detailed.
The cute short story is about Samantha and her parents who travel from California to Australia during Christmastime to visit relatives. Samantha brings along her stuffed koala named Klampie for the ride. However, during a ride in the car, the toy animal falls under the car seat and a lost, live koala takes its place.
Since koalas sleep during the day and are awake at night, Samantha does not realize the switch and falls more in love with her furry friend. She takes the live Klampie almost everywhere they travel in Australia without knowing its true identity.
When the trip ends, Samantha and her parents board the plane to return to the United States. During the night on the plane, the animal wakes up and scares everyone on board so is kept in the captain’s cabin. In the end, both Klampies find their proper homes: the live one goes to live at the nearby zoo and the toy one is reunited with Samantha.
The best part of this book is its educational value. Young readers not only learn how koalas mainly eat eucalyptus leaves, are nocturnal, feel furry and are not bears, but they learn about the Australian culture with “barbies” and seasonal changes. Samantha asks several times what a word or saying means such as “vice versa” and “mystery” and good explanations are given.
This is an enjoyable bedtime story to read aloud to a child or on his or her own as it promotes understanding of nature, travelling and relationships. Kudos to Rodriguez for his endearing koala mystery and this reader hopes there are more written like it!