Author: Janell Cannon

Illustrator: Janell Cannon

Publisher and year: Scholastic 2004

Number of pages: 38

Genre: Fiction

           Pinduli is the story of a beautiful hyena that wanders away from her mother into the East African wild. While Pinduli is wandering she runs into dogs, a lion and a zebra who all judged Pinduli’s looks. Pinduli becomes very self conscience and starts to change her looks to fit in, she gets to the point where she covers herself in dust making her look like a ghost. All the animals that once teased her were now afraid of her and begged her to forgive them for being mean since the believed she was a ghost. Pinduli told them they must find out why they were teasing others and give the one you teased food to be forgiven. Pinduli’s mother found her and reminded her of her inner and outer beauty

This text talks a lot about how you should always treat others how you want to be treated. The text also talks about being true to yourself and not changing to fit in. Since these are the main themes throughout the story I believe that this text might function as a door. I believe this because the readers can learn lessons from the text and apply those lessons to their own lives. Feeling like you don’t fit in is something that a lot of people are able to connect to. Since this books features animals there are no cultures represented besides the fact that the story is based in East Africa. At the end of the book there is diagram that shows the hyena family and other animals from East Africa, which gives readers some insight about the wild life in Africa that a lot of readers probably don’t know about. I really liked how the author put an explanation about the different animals in the book at the end because it made me as a reader feel more connected to the book after having more knowledge of the animals.

The illustrations throughout this book are beautifully done and the emotions of each animal is very clear in the text . While all different types of animals are teasing Pinduli she is always facing right showing that she is less secure. I have also noticed that all the animals that have teased her are much bigger and are higher up on the page showing that the have the power in that moment. As the story goes on and as the mean animals learn their lesson and apologize to Pinduli then she becomes more proud of her appearance and she starts facing left showing that she is more secure with herself. I really enjoyed this text because it teaches the important lesson of never changing yourself for someone else and also to treat others, as you want to be treated.