Book Review of Armando and the Amazing Animal Race
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The Children’s Book Review
Armando and the Amazing Animal Race
Written by Diana Schaffter
Illustrated by Juan Pablo Ruiz Morales, Oksana Didkova, and Vanessa Royal Robinson
Ages: 8-12 | 350 Pages
Publisher: Sea Otter Press (2025) | ISBN: 978-1-0690795-0-3
What to Expect: Environmental protection, animals, science, nature, diversity, perseverance.
In this exciting middle-grade adventure, readers will join the intrepid and intelligent hero Armando on a race around the world to study and document seven of the world’s most endangered animals. The thrill of the adventure will keep you on the edge of your seat!
Armando is fascinated by animals, just like his Mom before him, so when he receives a secretive note from his Granny asking him to bring night-vision goggles and bear spray with him when he visits her for the summer, he has high hopes for an exciting animal-themed undercover nighttime mission. Best of all would be participation in the I-SAW Amazing Animal Race—but Armando’s father would never allow it.
Then things get even more mysterious when Armando finds a long-lost letter from his mother to him, and rivalry with an obnoxious professor spurs Granny to enter Armando and herself in the Race. But as they set off around the world on this most dangerous of animal-preservation adventures, Armando’s questions are about more than animals. How did Granny get his Dad to agree to them entering? What really happened to his Mom all those years ago? And what’s the deal with the Race’s creepy cosmetics company sponsor?
A crowded cast of scientists, adventurers, and villains keeps the story moving at a fast pace as the mystery concerning Armando’s mother unfolds—but this is as much a story about animal preservation as it is about the hero’s past. Readers will pick up a wealth of geographical and zoological knowledge as they follow Granny and Armando’s journey, and Granny’s quirky, chaotic personality will keep them enjoying every minute. Throughout each chapter, artwork presents key artifacts from the story—maps, letters, tickets, and journal pages—helping readers feel immersed in the adventure as well as breaking up the text for easier reading.
Funny, exciting, and fact-filled, Armando and the Amazing Animal Race is a superb adventure for all explorers-in-the-making.
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About the Author
Diana Schaffter is no stranger to adventure. She is fluent in Thai, has traveled to over fifty countries, raised her two sons overseas, and lived in seven countries in Asia and Eastern Europe for forty-two years, including two years in Pyongyang, North Korea, where her husband was the head of the UNICEF office. Diana has worked with Cambodian refugees, taught in international schools, opened schools in Thailand and Vietnam, and has been an educational consultant to non-governmental organizations and the Ministry of Education in Laos.
In researching her story, she followed in the footsteps of her main character, Armando, traveling to Southern India to search for wild cobras with the Irula tribe, to Vladivostok, Russia, to see a Siberian tiger with a local conservationist, to the home of the elusive desert leopard in the Judean desert in Israel; and into the thick Brazilian Amazon rainforest to visit an Indigenous tribe and to photograph a pied tamarin monkey. Wherever she has lived, Diana has witnessed the power of human resilience, cooperation, and caring, which inspires her writing. Diana and her co-adventurer husband, Tim, now live in Sidney, BC, Canada, where she continues to write, give talks in schools and communities, and work with young people.
For more information, visit: dianaschaffter.com.
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