AFRICAN SAFARI.
By Edward W. Pastore'31. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,1956. 231 pp. $3.00.
African Safari is the story of Chet Wagner, a fifteen-year-old boy from Youngstown, Ohio, whose uncle, a professional hunter, takes him on a bring-'em-back-alive expedition in Tanganyika. Although the narrative element in the book is weak, there are enough vivid and exciting scenes of jungle action to maintain the reader's interest.
From chapter to chapter we move through adventures in capturing or killing the various fauna of Tanganyika and, as we do so, are given the necessary technical information by means of rather awkwardly interpolated question-and-answer sessions between Chet and Uncle Harry. At the same time there is a curious subplot involving a mysterious Russian named Bishoff, who habitually hijacks captured animals. It is not made clear how this activity serves the aims of the Kremlin, but in any case Bishoff is thwarted by his American adversaries.
Mr. Pastore says his book is written for boys in their early teens. Actually, in preparing to write this review, I read the book aloud to my seven-year-old son and found that very little of it was beyond him. What he missed - largely the social and political implications of the Bishoff episode and of Chet's sentimentalized friendship with a native boy - was, I think, well missed. He was fascinated by the animal and reptile aspects of the book, and so was I - though Mr. Pastore's insistence on gory details sometimes requires a strong stomach. Among the good things in the story there are encounters with snakes and lions, baboons and hyenas, lizards and giraffes, aardvarks and anteaters, elephants and rhinos, wart hogs and hippos, and a climactic battle with a black leopard known as Crooked-Claw. Readers of any age will respond to this profusion of wild life.
