Favel Parrett, Kimmi: Queen of the Dingoes, Lothian Children’s Books, November 2023, 144 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 97809734422057
Kimmi, as the title suggest, is a female dingo. We meet her first when she her mother and aunt watch in fear as a man shoots one of Kimmi’s brothers. The scene is shocking, and the reader is confronted by the violent reaction of the man to seeing the dingo females and the pups. The boy who stops him shooting is brave and allows the animals to live. However, in order to save them all they must be separated. Kimmi’s surviving brothers will go to a zoo in Darwin while Kimmi will make a long journey to Victoria to live at a dingo sanctuary. The adults will be moved somewhere safe where the boy’s mother has set up a den for them with food, next to a river that will supply them with plenty of water.
The animals are anthropomorphized, given human thoughts and emotions. In this way, Kimmi’s mother makes a decision to return to try to find her children. Her journey becomes a kind of quest as she braves dangers along the way and follows the home – journey – home pattern.
The book has a strong conservation message. It will certainly raise awareness about the importance of dingoes in Australian nature and the need to save them from extinction.
This is reinforced by information at the end about the dingo sanctuary near Melbourne to which Kimmi is sent. The author tells us that she works there and the owner and founder, Lyn Watson, features in the book. Of additional interest in this final section of the book is information about alpine and tropical dingoes and the differences between them.
The book is illustrated throughout with black and white line drawings.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
