Sometimes our January books are the hardest to get through. Because we meet on the first Wednesday of every month, we are often reading the book the month before. This means that our January book often has to compete with the chaos that goes on at the end of the year (closeouts at work, holiday parties, holiday trips, etc.) This can be especially hard when you have a really heavy read at the end of the year. Fortunately this year our January book was "Hannah's Dream" by Diane Hammond.
As you can tell from the cover, "Hannah's Dream" is all about elephants - more specifically, one elephant named Hannah. For over 40 years, Hannah has been the only elephant at the Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Her only constant companion is her zoo-keeper Sam, who won't retire until he knows that someone will be there to look after Hannah when he's gone. Meanwhile, a new director of the zoo is making Hannah's the new focus of the zoo marketing campaign. Will the zoo do what is right for Hannah, or will it do what it can to hold on to its start attraction?
"Hannah's Dream" was one of the lighter books we've read this year. While there were some serious moments in the book, something about remained very hopeful. Hannah is a very sweet and lovely animal who does have a sparkling personality, and the Max L. Biedelman zoo is filled with a very quirky selection of staff and visitors. It's not really hard to guess what is going to happen, but you can tell that there is a lot of fun to be had getting there. As someone who spent the month of December glued to the Hallmark Channel and its Christmas movies, I mentioned that it would be a perfect candidate for adaptation for one of its movies (or depending on the edit, it could be a perfect choice for Lifetime).
It's a simple tale, it doesn't share that complicated grit that was present in "Water for Elephants". Perfect for a light read. I listened to the audiobook version on my drive to see my family and I have to admit that the narrator did a fantastic job of bringing the story to life, especially distinguishing all the different characters (of which there were many).
People in the club mostly gave it 3-4 stars out of 5. One thing we we were all surprised about was the fact that this was the first in a series and that the next book was focusing on a killer whale ("Friday's Harbor"). If you like happy stories about animals and looking for a light read, you are really going to like "Hannah's Dream".
As you can tell from the cover, "Hannah's Dream" is all about elephants - more specifically, one elephant named Hannah. For over 40 years, Hannah has been the only elephant at the Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Her only constant companion is her zoo-keeper Sam, who won't retire until he knows that someone will be there to look after Hannah when he's gone. Meanwhile, a new director of the zoo is making Hannah's the new focus of the zoo marketing campaign. Will the zoo do what is right for Hannah, or will it do what it can to hold on to its start attraction?
"Hannah's Dream" was one of the lighter books we've read this year. While there were some serious moments in the book, something about remained very hopeful. Hannah is a very sweet and lovely animal who does have a sparkling personality, and the Max L. Biedelman zoo is filled with a very quirky selection of staff and visitors. It's not really hard to guess what is going to happen, but you can tell that there is a lot of fun to be had getting there. As someone who spent the month of December glued to the Hallmark Channel and its Christmas movies, I mentioned that it would be a perfect candidate for adaptation for one of its movies (or depending on the edit, it could be a perfect choice for Lifetime).
It's a simple tale, it doesn't share that complicated grit that was present in "Water for Elephants". Perfect for a light read. I listened to the audiobook version on my drive to see my family and I have to admit that the narrator did a fantastic job of bringing the story to life, especially distinguishing all the different characters (of which there were many).
People in the club mostly gave it 3-4 stars out of 5. One thing we we were all surprised about was the fact that this was the first in a series and that the next book was focusing on a killer whale ("Friday's Harbor"). If you like happy stories about animals and looking for a light read, you are really going to like "Hannah's Dream".
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