Koalas in a Crisis

Animal Ark [GB Order] #16

by Lucy Daniels, Ben M. Baglio

Six months in the Australian outback - a dream come true for animal lover Mandy Hope! She can't wait to meet all the exotic creatures down under.

Mandy longs to meet her first koala and she's not disappointed when she visits the wildlife sanctuary. But her joy turns to horror when she learns that the koalas and their babies are threatened.

Can Mandy save the koalas from starvation?

Genres: Childrens, Animals, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 1996

About the author

Lucy Daniels is the collective name for the writing team that created the bestselling children's book series Animal Ark, many of the books are also published under the name of the series creator, Ben M. Baglio.

Reviews

[Taylor]

Loved this series when I was younger. Still a huge animal lover and would like to read the rest of this series!

[Theodore]

Nostalgia wave elert!!
This book made me obsessed with koalas when I was eleven!
I even got a koala toy, which I named Cherry.
I loved the descriptions of the Bush in Australia, with all the animals!
This book is really vividly emersive, I felt like I was right there with Mandy helping the koalas and camping in the wilderness.
Animal Ark is a really good
series generally!


⭐️5/5
11+
cws: endangered animals, mild peril

[Sarah]

Well, what can I say? It was an Animal Ark book.
The reason I gave it 2 stars was simply so Goodreads doesn't start trying to recommend me books for 8 year olds.
Basically I started this book aaaaages ago and I've finally got around to reading it.
Great books for kids who are just starting out in a fictional world. I guess I'm just not really the intended audience.

[Margaret]

I love koalas so I really liked this book

[Rena Sherwood]

There are many books in the popular Animal Ark series that were never published in America. Why Scholastic chose to ignore the entire Australian trilogy is a reason that even Einstein couldn't have figured out.

This is the first book in the aforementioned trilogy, where Mandy and her parents spend six months Down Under. Why? It's a veterinarian exchange program.

A what?

I have no idea if there was any such program in the 1990s, but I highly doubt it. There were and are still plenty of programs for veterinary students, but not for full-fledged vets. Vets have a terrible time establishing and maintaining their practices, so I cannot, even if a loaded gun was put to my head, think of a good reason why the two vets of a successful practice would just decide to bugger off to Oz for six months.

But, then again, this is Kids' Book Series Logic, where nobody swears, the names of the real authors are kept hidden, continuity is a joke, and nobody ever ages.

Let's examine that last quality, class, shall we?

Mandy is forever twelve during the Animal Ark Series. Series where there are at least ten Christmas specials. A series where she spends six months in Australia. A series where she spends another six months or so in North America, Africa, and China.

Now, granted, I still have about 20 books to go in the series, but she's still 12. I'm really hoping that in the final book, Mandy will finally turn 13 and say, "Man, that was longest year of my life!"

In this book, Mandy quickly finds another kid to play the part of James, since he's still stuck in Yorkshire. There is a decent story about trying to save a small colony of koalas from loggers. There are, surprisingly, real facts about wildlife in Australia. This also starts a C plot about a platypus near where the Hopes are staying. It's a bit of a travel guide to Australia at times, talking about busters,
bushwalking and boogie boarding.

This was written by Jenny Oldfield, who wrote the first Animal Ark books. She can never resist sticking some slapstick in her stories. I don't know who did the illustrations, (for some reason, my book doesn't say) but they're a notch better than for the first 15 books or so.

[A.R. Collins]

This is one of the (strangely few) Animal Ark books that I remember reading very often as a child, and now I can see why. I don't know how accurate the depiction of life in Australia is, but either way, it's vividly realised and very engaging. One just has to try to forget the blatant nonsense about Mandy not knowing that a baby kangaroo is called a joey (everyone knows that, especially people like Mandy!), and enjoy the rest of the story.

The change of setting is very welcome after sixteen books (counting Sheepdog in the Snow) of Welford, with its familiar landscape, its various farmers in trouble and its overused characters doing pretty much the same thing over and over again. Here, the larger and more exotic Australian landscape and extraordinary wildlife make for engaging reading, as the writer (Jenny Oldfield again, back on form with a new challenge, after a little break from the series) effectively conveys Mandy's fascination and excitement - and fear, too, when she has that unforgettable close encounter with a highly venomous snake!

The Australian supporting cast members are very different from those back in Yorkshire, particularly the two who have specific counterparts there: veterinary nurse Katie, whose energy and limitless outdoor-living prowess I actually find rather annoying compared to Simon's quiet helpfulness; and Gary, whom I have always found likeable and memorable, and who may be doing dear James a disservice by being better thought-out as a character!

As for the koalas, they're generally covered by the comments I've already made about the Australian wildlife and Mandy's reaction to it. Specifically, they're as cute and loveable as the reader expects; of course we're rooting for them and, of course, we aren't too worried about them with Mandy on-hand to find them a new home.

[Jen]

Added to my lifetime shelf, the book I read obsessively in primary school. I loved all the Animal Ark books, and wanted to be a vet, but Koalas in a Crisis was the literary equivalent of chicken noodle soup, which I read if I couldn't sleep, or if I was home unwell. It was also my first audiobook, after I wore out my paperback from over-reading.!

[Nathan Forester]

Such a sweet and adorable story and also very fun and accurate to Australia.