Description
Lottie collects dead creatures and lovingly cares for them, hoping to preserve them, to save them from disintegration. Her father understands - Lottie has a scientific mind, he thinks. Her aunt wants it to stop, and she goes to cruel lengths to make sure it does.
Review
This is a short, easy to read, verse novel with a deep and sometimes dark subject matter.
We discover that Lottie has lost two of the most important people in her life, and that during World War II other members of her family had been interned in an Australian camp due to their German origin.
Lottie has developed a fascination, unhealthy if you ask her Aunt Hilda, with death and thereafter. She tries through taxidermy to remodel, reconstruct, rewrite and revise, but particularly to resurrect.
Luckily her father understands her and introduces her to the taxidermist at the museum, so there is hope for a future career for his unusual daughter.
We are all a little strange, aren't we? Lottie’s journey and quirkiness highlights that we can all tread a different path.
With important themes of family and heritage, loss and coping, this is really easy to read, and the content makes it best suited to those in
Year 9 and above.
Reviewed by Rob
