I received an advance copy of, True Stories of Animal Heroes: Talala, by Vita Murrow. This is a great true story about, you dont have to be blood relatives to be family. Even animals know that.

I think that even the promise of a lovestruck moose in the other book I've yet to see of this series might not be enough for me to persist with them. There certainly is no "Animal Hero" here, and with the amount of fictionalising and putting character on to a leopard cub much less of the "True Story", too. Sure, there is photographic evidence of the truth behind the story, for there was honestly a true situation with a baby leopard somehow deciding to get adopted by a lioness and living – and suckling – with her own lion babies. But that's it – it could just about be a page-long chapter of a book concerning unusual animals and animal behaviour, but it doesn't deserve being a volume of its own. That is, of course, until you realise the reason for the piece is nothing to do with cute critters, but with giving the lesson that families might not always be what you first imagine them to be. So if that's what makes Talala a "hero", so be it, but that doesn't make this the successful animal storybook anyone would assume it to be. One and a half stars.