Two
girls in Africa--one on the seashore, one in the dry country of East Africa.
One girl worried about sharks, the other worried about leopards and snakes
and the heat. Both worried about big macho bullies who want to control
everything. The only difference is--Li and Vinny live four million
years apart.
Vinny has come to visit her
divorced father on an archaeological dig in Africa. The country is
strange, and so is her situation. She can't even get up to go to
the bathroom at night because leopards roam the area then. At the
same time, she can't talk to her father about stuff because his colleagues
are arguing with him about where to dig for fossils. Things get complicated
when Vinny finds a fossil that shouldn't really belong there, and starts
to discover more about the sea apes, ape ancestors who lived off food from
the sea, and lived in the sea as well as they did on land, in the exact
same spot where Vinny's father is digging.
The story jumps back and forth
from Vinny to Li, as Vinny speculates what happened to Li, and Li tells
her story of fighting for power with the male leader of her tribe of apes.
Will the archaeologists in the dig believe that Vinny has found a missing
link? Will Li be able to save her tribe from a killer tidal wave
headed her way? (Stacy Charlesbois, Adult & Young Adult Services
Librarian,
charlesb@metronet.lib.mi.us,
Farmington Community Library, Farmington, Michigan) |