The illustrationsĬatia Chien’s art is really quite lovely. Anyone of any age who has ever felt isolated or broken will identify with him.Īnd the fact that he remembered the promise he’d made in childhood, and kept that promise as an adult, is something that will affect children deeply. The story Rabinowitz tells is beautiful and powerful. And when he saw tracks from a new jaguar, the largest he’d seen, he followed the tracks, hoping to find the jaguar.Īs it turned out, the jaguar was following him. Rabinowitz could identify every jaguar at the preserve, just from their tracks. It was through his efforts that Belize set aside the first jaguar preserve. He needed to be the voice of the jaguars, to keep them from harm.
They needed to be protected, if they were to survive.Īnd he remembered the promise that he had made to the lonely jaguar at the zoo when he was a child. He realized that jaguars were being overhunted. Promises to keepĪs an adult, Rabinowitz studied bears in the Great Smoky Mountains, then went to Belize to study jaguars.
It was only when he was working with animals that he felt whole. But that didn’t change the feeling of brokenness. And he understood that he was deeply, profoundly, broken.įinally, as a young adult, his parents enrolled him in an experimental program that allowed him to learn to speak fluently. So the school put him in a class for disturbed children. At school, his attempts at speech were considered disruptive. When Rabinowitz was growing up, his parents took him to a lot of doctors, tried a lot of therapies, to cure his stuttering. So people ignore or misunderstand or hurt them, the same way people ignore or misunderstand or hurt me.” So he made a promise, first to his pets, and then to a jaguar at the zoo: “I promise that if I can ever find my voice, I will be their voice and keep them from harm.” And he could talk to the animals at the Bronx Zoo.Īnd he realized something: “Animals can’t get the words out, just as I can’t get the words out. He could tell his pets his fears and hopes and dreams. Except when he was singing, or talking to animals. When Rabinowitz was a child, he stuttered. It’s a memoir written by a noted zoologist and conservationist, Alan Rabinowitz. A Boy and a Jaguar is more than a picture book.
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