Mungai and the Goa Constrictor by Amelia E Curzon

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This was great fun, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Amelia took a bunch of woodland and jungle creatures and gave them all huge personalities. There were good guys and bad guys. There were greedy guys, hardworking guys, criminal guys, and guys with a social conscience. They could almost have been human… 

Mungai is a…well…he’s best described as a ‘not unpleasant-looking creature’, who has escaped captivity and manages to avoid recapture using his skills to remain undetected. He wants a good life—the sort of life the two-legged species has—of comfort and abundance. And he wants to achieve it with the minimum effort and cost to himself. With Goa, the boa constrictor, (who has a most charming speech impediment), the pair manipulates a merry band of assorted woodland and jungle creatures into achieving that end for them with promises of rewards. It’s easy—all they have to do is make things from the jungle's resources, which will then be exchanged for things that will benefit them all. It’s not long before there’s a distinct unease amongst the working contingent. Something isn’t right. Why does it say ‘keep out’ in the area in which they are working? And why is there no sign of these rewards? It’s not long before there’s Mutiny on the Bounty. The route to a life so desperately coveted by Mungai and Goa could well be derailed… 

The animals are so well caricatured, there’s no hard work involved in trying to imagine them, from the unscrupulous Mungai and Goa, to the avuncular hard-working Bodger, the badger, and Punch, the cheetah. Amelia has selected a perfect combination of animals with delightful names. There’s a gentle humour accompanying the sharp and witty dialogue and the tale is satirical: I could feel the justified prod at the greed and selfishness that ultimately robs our world of its natural resources and creatures dependent on them to survive. 

This was a clever, enjoyable, different, well-crafted story and one I’d love to see as an animated movie. Both the book (and the movie!) would appeal to older children and adults alike.