Jamrach's Menagerie

I think one of the reason’s Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch is such a compelling story is that it is so close to being a true story.  All the components are at once fantastic and based on fact.  The opening scene, in which a small boy is almost consumed by a tiger, but lives to tell the tale, is based on a recorded incident.  The story that follows of a group of adventurers out in search of real live dragon, could just as easily be true if you allow yourself to imagine what it would be like to live in a time when no one in your part of the part of the world had ever seen a Komodo dragon and all you knew were the stories.  

Terrible things happen in the course of this novel, but what I was left with was a sense of wonder and possibility.  

~EM, Reference desk