1 out of 4 stars
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The Adventures of the Gorilla Billies by Mark Stopford is a collection of eight short stories about a family of four gorillas who live on Moonshine Mountain. The matriarch, Granny, is known for her homemade medicines. Noah is the wise patriarch who oversees the family. Maggie May, 16, is the beautiful daughter who’s obsessed with social media, and Elvis, 14, is the music-loving son. In the first chapter, The Adventures Begin, an alien gives the Gorilla Billies a spaceship. In the seven stories that follow, they use the spaceship to help rescue other animals who are in danger. For example, in the second chapter, they put out huge fires that are destroying homes in Australia, and in the third chapter, they rescue their yeti cousin from his melting iceberg home.
The family’s main foes live at the bottom of the mountain. Bluey Boar is the crooked police chief who owns a golf course that has already ruined some of the local land. Along with his pet Hogzilla and his three henchmen named Shake, Rattle, and Roll (the Gaitor Brothers), Bluey is constantly coming up with ideas that will ruin even more of the land. In the seventh chapter, The Curse of Cochise, Bluey decides to hold a huge outdoor concert on ancient burial grounds. The Gorilla Billies have to figure out how to combat Bluey’s lack of respect for the earth.
The best part of the book is the theme of environmentalism. From fighting deforestation to addressing global warming, the Gorilla Billies drive home the point of the need for people to take better care of their home. In the last story, Noah’s Ark, they rescue an entire circus full of animals who have been mistreated. As they rehome the animals, they teach about the importance of preservation and conservation. Throughout the book, they are fighting for the rights of their fellow animals, and they are using their spaceship to help them travel the world for rescue missions.
The characters are interesting, but they are poorly developed. Even in a children’s book, character development is important. Readers want to understand and connect with a character. It is difficult to do that with this book. Take Maggie May, for example. Besides being a gorilla, she has only two character traits: she is beautiful, and she loves social media. The author does not go into depth about her at all, so it is hard to understand her motivations, and it is impossible to create an image of her in your mind.
Unfortunately, the worst part of the book is the editing. The mistakes are so numerous that it is very distracting. The book takes twice as long to read because you are constantly decoding the errors. The author consistently switches between present and past tense, often in the same sentence. Some of the errors are minor, such as misplaced commas or incorrect capitalization. Others are more confusing. For example, in Chapter One, Granny’s name is spelled with a y, but in Chapter Two, it changes to Grannie. The multiple spelling errors muddy the text and sometimes make the meaning unclear. One example is, throughout the book, the author uses the word “scalley,” but through context, I could tell he meant “scaly.”
I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. The book has some good ideas, but they’re poorly executed. While it’s marketed as a young adult book, the stories are more appropriate for younger children. As it stands, I would not recommend this book. However, if it is properly edited, the stories are beefed up, and the characters are fleshed out, I would recommend this to elementary-aged children who enjoy animal stories.
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The Adventures of The Gorilla Billies
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