Nominated for the 2022 CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals. A rhinoceros remembers his life before grey captivity, one full of colour, with familiar smells and sights. He thinks of his mother being slain by poachers. He has searched the zoo but cannot find another like him. He fears he is the last. He describes a joyless life for all the animals with him, before being rescued and brought back home. The colour is brought back into his life when he realis-es he is not the last. Last evokes a longing for home from the reader and a sense of hope for the future upon its ending. In her debut as an illustrator, Nicole Davies effectively and beautifully portrays the differences in mood and surroundings between the rhinoceros' life before and during captivity through her effective use of colour.

This book demonstrates the enormous and heroic efforts of those responsible for bringing the rhino back to life when it was faced with near-certain extinction not so long ago. The book also outlines some of the essential decisions and actions required to turn the situation around today.

From the award-winning author of the bestselling Library Mouse series comes a biographical picture book about the true story of rhino champion Anna Merz and the black rhinoceros Samia. With a portion of the proceeds being donated to the Lewa Downs Conservancy, this engaging story is perfect for animal lovers, animal rights enthusiasts, and fans of Me . . . Jane. When Anna Merz traveled to East Africa, she became appalled at the rampant poaching that took place there, specifically toward the black rhinoceros. Anna devoted her life to protecting the wildlife of the region, founding a reserve in Kenya called Lewa Downs to care for them. Anna kept a watchful eye on the animals, especially the rhinos. One day, Anna found a small black rhino calf, likely abandoned by its mother. So she nurtured the calf, named it Samia, fed it special formula, and even let it sleep in her bed. Everywhere Anna went Samia was never far behind. The two became so close, in fact, that Anna soon learned how rhinos communicate with one another. Anna was able to distinguish the rhino’s many different grunts and what she meant by them: “Snort! Snuff,” cried Samia (“This is fun!”); “Hoo-hoo-hoo!” she called (“I’m coming!”). But with time, Samia got bigger . . . and bigger . . . and bigger—to the point where she couldn’t fit inside Anna’s house any longer. It was time for Anna to make the tough decision she always knew she would have to make at some point or another: She would need to reintroduce Samia to the wild so she could lead her life with the rest of her kind. Richly illustrated with pen, ink, and watercolors, Daniel Kirk’s first nonfiction picture book brings awareness to wildlife protection and fosters further understanding of animal rescue and welfare, positioned in a sensitive way that’s appropriate for young readers. Kirk traveled to Kenya to see the reserve firsthand and his photographs grace the back matter, which includes an author’s note and bibliography.

When Lawrence Anthony learned that the northern white rhino, living in the war-ravaged Congo, was on the very brink of extinction, he knew he had to act. If the world lost the sub-species, it would be the largest land mammal since the woolly mammoth to go extinct. In The Last Rhinos, Anthony recounts his attempts to save these remarkable animals. The demand for rhino horns in the Far East has turned poaching into a dangerous black market that threatens the lives of not just these rare beasts, but also the rangers who protect them. The northern white rhino's last refuge was in an area controlled by the infamous Lord's Resistance Army, one of the most vicious rebel groups in the world. In the face of unmoving government bureaucracy, Anthony made a perilous journey deep into the jungle to try to find and convince them to help save the rhino. An inspiring story of conservation in the face of brutal war and bureaucratic quagmires, The Last Rhinos will move animal lovers everywhere.

The White Rhino Saga - back in print after more than 30 years - is more relevant than ever as our rhino population faces a deadly poaching onslaught. With a new introduction by Julian Rademeyer and a 'missing chapter' never before published, a new generation of readers can enjoy and learn from the extraordinary story of how the white rhino was saved from extinction four decades ago. From Ian Player's first visit to the Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa's Zululand in 1952, the salvation of the white rhino from extinction became a personal obsession. The white rhino, the second largest animal in the world, had roamed over the southern half of the African continent in large numbers during the nineteenth century and before. By the 1960s fewer than five hundred remained, confined to 72 000 acres, not nearly enough territory for them to remain healthy and alive. The problem confronting Ian Player and his co-workers was twofold: how to repopulate the game reserves of Africa where white rhinos had once lived, and how to supply white rhinos to the zoos of the world. The techniques for capturing and transporting the huge animals are fascinating. The White Rhino Saga, Alan Paton writes in his foreword, 'is a book for every lover of the wild. The danger of captures, the disappointments, the ultimate successes, makes a splendid tale.' It is a tale of adventure, of Africa, of animals - and of the man who set out to save them.

The black rhino is nature's tank, feared by all animals. Even lions will break off a hunt to detour around one. And yet the black rhino is on the edge of extinction, its numbers dwindling from 100,000 at the turn of the century, to less than 2,500 today. The reason is that in places like Yemen, China, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, the rhino's horn is more valuable than gold, so valuable that people will risk their lives to harvest it. To deter rhino poachers, African governments have spent millions--on helicopters, paramilitary operations, fences and guard dogs, even relocation to protected areas. Finally, Namibia decided to de-horn its rhino population, in a last ditch effort to stop the slaughter. In 1991, Carol Cunningham and Joel Berger, and their eighteen-month-old daughter Sonja, went to Namibia to weigh the effects of de-horning on rhinos. In Horn of Darkness, they tell the story of three years in the Namib Desert, studying Africa's last sizable population of free-roaming black rhinos. This is the closest most readers will come to experiencing life in the remaining wilds of Africa. Cunningham and Berger, writing nate chapters, capture what it is like to leave the comforts of civilization, to camp for months at a time in a land filled with deadly predators, to study an animal that is reclusive, unpredictable, and highly dangerous. The authors describe staking out water holes in the dead of the night, creeping to within twenty-seven meters of rhinos to photograph them, all the while keeping a lookout for hyenas, elephants, and lions. They recount many heart-pounding escapes--one rhino forces Carol Cunningham up a tree, an unseen lion in hot pursuit of hyenas races right past a frozen Joel Berger--and capture the adrenaline rush of inching closer to a rhino that might flee--or charge--at any moment. They also give readers a clear sense of the careful, patient work involved in studying animals, the frustration of long days without finding rhinos or seeing other people, coping with heat and thirst (the Namib desert is one of the driest on Earth), with dirt and insects, driving hundreds of kilometers in a Land Rover packed to capacity, slowing amassing records on one hundred individual rhinos over the course of several years. And perhaps most important, the authors reveal that the data they collected suggests that the de-horning project might backfire--that in the four years after de-horning began, calf survival was down (the evidence suggests that hyenas might be preying on calves and the horn less mothers couldn't defend their offspring). They also describe the dark side of scientific work, from the petty jealousy of other scientists--outside researchers were often seen as ecological imperialists--to the controversy that erupted after the authors published their findings, as furious officials of the Namibian conservation program denounced their findings and through delays and other tactics effectively withheld a permit to allow the couple to continue their study. Weaving together the historical accounts of other naturalists, a vividly detailed look at life in the wild, and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of scientific work and the dark side of the conservation movement, Horn of Darkness is destined to be a classic work on the natural world.