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Cleopatra the Turtle Girl is an homage to the turtles of Guyana told with tremendous enthusiasm by Peter Pritchard. The book, published by The Guyana Book Foundation, tells the story of Cleopatra, a young Guyanese girl, and the turtle species she encounters on a series of trips with her Uncle Jeffrey, who handily finances them through his career in the gold mines.

As one expects from Pritchard, information on the turtles is thorough. It is accompanied by beautiful species illustrations by Giorgio Voltolina, repurposed from Pritchard and Pedro Trebbau’s Turtles of Venezuela (Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1984). Children, who like Cleopatra are turtophiles, will be fascinated by the descriptions of the animals and charmed by Pritchard’s obviously loving attention to detail in them.

The book’s limitations become clear when considering its possible appeal for children who are not already very interested in turtles. Cleopatra’s fascination with the animals serves as a framework for delivering information on turtles, and lacks narrative depth otherwise.

Although there are interesting anecdotes about such things as the local market, travelling in Guyana, and family life, Cleopatra’s character is not well developed. She is kept at a distance from the reader both because she rarely speaks herself, and because when she does, it is in a patois that jars with the narrative voice. Pritchard is a good writer, and for the most part, his text flows effortlessly. However, in this case, the story he tells is too long to support the picture book this resembles. The book, which would better suit a trade paperback size, is text heavy as a result, a fact further emphasized by its large font.

In many ways, Cleopatra the Turtle Girl is a story from a different era in environmental writing for children. Despite Pritchard’s obvious affection for Guyana, his narrator’s point of view is clearly that of someone from outside of the community about which he writes. The book also includes incidents that would not have raised an eyebrow in earlier days, but which are not normally included in current texts.

Cleopatra the Turtle Girl ends, for example, with Cleopatra enterprisingly selling tickets to her friends to see her newly acquired matamata feeding. She collected the turtle from the wild on one of her trips with Uncle Jeffrey. Although the scores of turtle scientists who grew up nourishing their interest by watching turtles for hours in zoos, pet stores, or in tanks at home can no doubt understand her instinct to keep the turtle, the incident will inevitably spark debate.

Debate about how best to nurture young turtle lovers is not necessarily a bad thing, however. And it is those children — who will carry the mantle of turtle science and conservation into the future — who will love and appreciate this book.

Reviewed by: Kathleen Martin, Canadian Sea Turtle Network,
2070 Oxford Street, Suite 110, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3L 2T2 Canada
(E-mail: kmartin@seaturtle.ca)