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REALLY RAOULINO by Dina Fischbein

REALLY RAOULINO

by Dina Fischbein & illustrated by Bill Crews

Pub Date: April 1st, 2006
ISBN: 1-59354-151-1

This uneven adventure of a misplaced reptile is at least cute. Raoulino doesn’t know how he could ever become accustomed to the zoo’s reptile house where he now lives. He misses his lizard foster parents and the jungle home from which he was captured. But Raoulino—of a reptilian species entirely unknown to the professors at the Metropolitan Zoo—is the reptile house’s star attraction. Luckily he’s made friends with the other reptiles—the unnamed cobra, Wally the chuckwalla, Basil (whose species is unspecified, but who appears to be a skink) and the alligators. Raoulino and friends determine to escape, and they catch boats back to their homelands; on the way home, Raoulino discovers some interesting facts about his mysterious parentage. This sweet and lightweight adventure is weakened by inconsistent prose and overly excited dialogue. Adequate, but Nancy Farmer’s The Warm Place (1995) tells a similar story much more smoothly. (Fiction. 7-9)