Even Hyenas Don't Like to Be Laughed At

When I think of hyenas, my first association is usually the word "laughing." Films such as The Lion King have only strengthened the connection I make between hyenas and laughter. As I learned in Janell Cannon's Pinduli, it is spotted hyenas that make such a ruckus with their apparent amusement. The book's title character, however, is a striped hyena, and she is not the one doing the laughing...

Pinduli's mother insists that her young daughter is the most beautiful hyena in the world, and for a while, safe in the shelter of her mother's warm fur, Pinduli believes it. But one day she ventures off on her own, and the cruel reactions of several neighboring animals to her appearance cause her to reconsider her mother's opinion. Soon she is plagued by doubts, her self-worth shattered, but in an attempt to hide herself from the world she hits upon a clever plan to get her fellow savanna-dwellers to see the error of their ways.

Cannon has a warm writing style that packages biological and moral lessons into a thoroughly engaging story. Each two-page spread has one full-page illustration in glorious color and one page of text, which usually consists of two or three somewhat short paragraphs. Also included on the pages with text are small line drawings showing Pinduli's mother waiting for her daughter. She has a few adventures of her own, but the young hyena is the focus here, wandering aimlessly with an ever heavier heart.

Pinduli reminds me of A Snoodle's Tale, a Dr. Seuss-inspired VeggieTales video about a young creature whose dreams are dashed when several townsfolk berate him for his size and so-called lack of artistic ability. It takes a trip to a Mysterious Stranger who resides in a cave far above the city to restore some self-confidence. Pindula has no mountaintop sage to comfort her, but she does have her mother, and ultimately she must decide whose opinion is more important to her. Along the way, there's an amusing and useful peek at the ancestry of an insult that shows how one ill-considered unkind word can have far-reaching repercussions.

Cannon's illustrations, done in acrylics and colored pencil, are breathtaking as always. Hyenas aren't quite so reviled as some of the other subjects she has taken on, but once again Cannon presents a creature considered by many to be undesirable and makes it utterly irresistible. Along with the hyena, we get jolly black dogs, a sardonic old lion, cheeky zebras, spooked wildebeests, a hunched vulture, a tiny fox and a bald marabou, among others, all against the stunning backdrop of a deep blue sky and blazing sand blending delicately into one another. After the end of the story, Cannon provides four pages of textbook-style information about various kinds of hyenas and how the three main contentious issues in the book - hair style, stripes and big ears - affect certain members of the animal kingdom.

With such a variety of animals to take in, children needn't have a particular passion for hyenas in order to be drawn into Pindula, but by the time the book is over, I'd be surprised if they don't decide that a hyena is quite the beauteous creature after all.