The Giraffe

Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. Precious Ramotswe is the eminently sensible and cunning proprietor of the only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana. In Tears of the Giraffe she tracks a wayward wife, uncovers an unscrupulous maid, and searches for an American man who disappeared into the plains many years ago. In the midst of resolving uncertainties, pondering her impending marriage to a good, kind man, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, and the promotion of her talented secretary (a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College, with a mark of 97 per cent), she also finds her family suddenly and unexpectedly increased by two.

In the early 1980s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews fled the civil unrest, famine and religious persecution of their native land in the hopes of being reunited in Yerusalem, their spiritual homeland, with its promises of a better life. Wuditu and her family risk their lives to make this journey, which leads them to a refugee camp in Sudan, where they are separated. Terrified, 15-year-old Wuditu must return to Ethiopia alone. “Don’t give up, Wuditu! Be strong!” The words of her little sister come to Wuditu in a dream and give her the courage to keep going. Wuditu must find someone to give her food and shelter or she will surely die. Finally Wuditu is offered a solution: working as a servant. However, she quickly realizes that she has become a slave. With nowhere else to go, she stays — until the villagers discover that she is a falasha, a hated Jew. Only her dream of one day being reunited with her family gives her strength — until the arrival of a stranger heralds hope and a new life in Israel. Based on real events, Wuditu’s story mirrors the experiences of thousands of Ethiopian Jews.

A young giraffe goes on a journey to try to fit in with other animals but learns to love his differences.

An up-to-date portrait of the giraffe, summarising current knowledge on their biology and behaviour along with current conservation efforts.

Even though Gilly the Giraffe has many wonderful things in her life, she sometimes lacks confidence. Why does she have to stand out so much with her long neck, her long black tongue and her mosaic patches? Why do some of the other animals point and laugh at her? Can it be possible to be different and to be cool? This activity book developed by expert child psychologist Dr Karen Treisman combines a colourfully illustrated therapeutic story about Gilly the Giraffe to help start conversations, which is followed by a wealth of creative activities for children to explore and build upon some of the ideas raised in the story, and beyond! The activities are accompanied by extensive advice and practical strategies for parents, carers and professionals on how to help children aged 5-10 boost their self-esteem and confidence.

From Shel Silverstein, the New York Times bestselling author of Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Giving Tree, comes a riotous rhyming picture book about a boy and his giraffe! Featuring rhythmic verse and iconic illustrations, A Giraffe and a Half will surely leave every reader, young and old, laughing until the very end. Beloved for over fifty years, this classic captures Silverstein’s signature humor and style. If you had a giraffe and he stretched another half, you would have a giraffe and a half. But what happens if you glue a rose to the tip of his nose? Or if you used a chair to comb his hair? Join this giraffe on a rollicking and ridiculous journey that will charm readers from beginning to end. And don't miss Runny Babbit Returns, the new book from Shel Silverstein!

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency received two Booker Judges’ Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

In the 1950s, Anne Innis Dagg was a young zoologist with a lifelong love of giraffe and a dream to study them in Africa. Based on extensive journals and letters home, Pursuing Giraffe vividly chronicles the realization of that dream and the year that she spent studying and documenting giraffe behaviour. Dagg was one of the first zoologists to study wild animals in Africa (before Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey); her memoir captures her youthful enthusiasm for her journey, as well as her näiveté about the complex social and political issues in Africa. Once in the field, she recorded the complexities of giraffe social relationships but also learned about human relationships in the context of apartheid in South Africa and colonialism in Tanganyika (Tanzania) and Kenya. Hospitality and friendship were readily extended to her as a white woman, but she was shocked by the racism of the colonial whites in Africa. Reflecting the twenty-three-year-old author’s response to an “exotic” world far removed from the Toronto where she grew up, the book records her visits to Zanzibar and Victoria Falls and her climb of Mount Kilimanjaro. Pursuing Giraffe is a fascinating account that has much to say about the status of women in the mid-twentieth century. The book’s foreword by South African novelist Mark Behr (author of The Smell of Apples and Embrace) provides further context for and insights into Dagg’s narrative.