Books in Jungle Doctor Animal Stories series

The wisdom of monkeys is proverbially small. They never could remember not to get too near to the hind feet of zebra, nor to throw coconuts at Chewi the leopard, nor to look into the eyes of snakes. Luckily for his little nephews, Uncle Nyani, the only survivor of a family of seven, is always near at hand to tell them how they can live to be as old as he is!

'He has an animal under his shirt and he says he won't stay in hospital unless that animal stays too' - thus we meet Hwikwi the mongoose for the first time! Mind you, it's almost the last, - the story of mongoose nearly finishes before it gets properly started! If it weren't for Elephant's powerful medicine . . . But if you want to find out why Elephant was burying the pink stuff from the Masumu tree, or for that matter, how Python got his bulge or Goon the baboon got the bump on his head, not to mention how Rhino's ill-tempered relative got a very sore nose indeed, then you're going to have to read this new collection of Jungle Doctor's larger-than-life animal fables!

There was once a monkey who didn't believe in crocodiles - but that didn't make any difference when he met one in the middle of the night on the banks of the Great River. There was another monkey who tried to pull himself out of a bog by his whiskers; all that was left of him was two small bubbles on top of the mud. And as for the snake who thought he could steal the egg of Kuku the hen without being found out - well, he couldn't say that his wife hadn't warned him in plenty of time!

Even by monkey standards, young Toto is pretty dim! Those baddies of the jungle, Crunch the Crocodile, Mbisi the Hyena, Slinki the Jackal, Vibi the Vulture and Gnark the crow look as though they are going to have an easy time finishing him off. However, Toto soon finds himself in the middle of a tug-of-war, for his real friends, Elephant, Giraffe, Parrot and Hornbill are determined to rescue him from the clutches of the jungle underworld. As the tug-of-war gets harder, we meet Toto's cousins Sticki, who has a sweet tooth, and Stoni, who is always short of pocket money, not to mention their Uncle Goldi, who has too much of it! But as for who wins, that's another story!

Boohoo the unhappy hippo was always in trouble. He had the kind of face which frightened even him when he saw it in a mirror, while the rest of him wasn't very much more beautiful! On top of all this, he suffered from hay-fever, and an Awful Desire to Do Good! Mind you, he was an expert at cracking coconuts, if that is, you like licking your coconut milk up off the ground! Hippo and his friends were lucky to have Jungle Doctor to write all their adventures down for us. If you want to know how he solved his problems at last, then start at page one and read on!

'Rhino bored holes in the clear morning air with his large spikey horn, and a deep rumble came from inside him, "I am big, I am strong, I am important. I AM RHINO!" And so Jungle Doctor's latest all-too-human animal creation makes his entrance! He begins by carving his own private motorway through the jungle - until, that is, the -elephant-that-isn't gets in the way! Poor Rhino! He seems to be blessed with the gift of not only making trouble for himself and everybody else, but getting into it as well! A large, self-opinionated, grumpy lump of trouble, looking for somewhere to happen, Rhino eventually discovers that there are problems that can't be brushed aside with a sharp horn or a hefty shoulder!