Karr (The Great Turkey Walk) once again mines a sliver of American history in this stylized novel, narrated by a camel from Egypt who is bought by a colonel in the U.S. Army and transported, along with other camels, to Texas to join the short-lived U.S. Camel Corps. Featuring occasional camel-speak (e.g., a human is a "man-beast"), Ali's narrative chronicles the animals' arrival in "Texas-America" in the "Year of the Infidels 1856." (Ali and the other camels, along with their cameleer, worship Allah; brief quotes from the Qur'an introduce the three parts of the novel.) Working with "soldier-beasts," for whom the camels frequently demonstrate their contempt by spitting, they are trained for an artillery experiment that fails and is abandoned. The camels next form a caravan and travel west across the desert, carrying supplies and hauling boulders as the army builds a new road. "A great road lasts almost forever," Ali consoles Fatinah, his eventual mate who, like Ali, despises servitude. "Our great-grandchildren will travel the road, the route we are breaking. They will feel pride in the knowledge of its builders. Pride in talents brought to this land first by us." While the story offers an idiosyncratic view of the Old West, the Gold Rush and other historical moments, it also may engage readers who can see past Ali's mannered speech and identify with his yearning to be free. Ages 10-up. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 5-8-Returning to the 19th century, Karr shapes her latest historical novel around the U.S. Army's attempt to create a Camel Corps in the American Southwest. Ali, the narrator and central character, is a principled and capable Egyptian camel, inculcated from infancy in devotion to Allah, pride in the accomplishments of "the Ancients" of Egypt, and the psychology of navigating the complex link between man and camel. Sold along with many other Egyptian camels, including Seid and Fatinah, to the army, Ali travels to the United States, learning as he goes, adapting to new landscapes, and yearning for the day when he and Fatinah will be old enough for marriage. Karr works in a good bit of information about these animals, including an explanation of how and why they spit so effectively, and provides a few brief, though frightening, examples of camel-on-camel violence, culminating with the deadly competition among Ali, Seid, and Omar to become Fatinah's mate. The two central human characters are both historical, and Karr tells a bit more about both of them in an afterword. While not a modern classic like The Great Turkey Walk (Farrar, 1998), Exiled combines a relatively exotic setting with children's love of animals for a successful exploration of a promising but failed experiment.-Coop Renner, Fairmeadows Elementary, Duncanville, TXCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr. 4-8. The actual history, found in a note at the back of the book, is fascinating: in the 1850s the U.S. army shipped camels from Egypt and tried to train them in the Texas desert, with hopes they would help the army cope with desert terrain. Karr draws on the history, but she tells the story from the viewpoint of one brave camel, Ali, who is torn from his mother in Egypt, sold to Christians, and shipped to America to work with the Camel Corps--until the whole idea is abandoned and he escapes to blaze his own trail. History through the eye of a camel is a cute idea, perhaps for a picture book, but it's tedious here and seems contrived in a long novel, despite Karr's careful interweaving of the real events and people of the time. Even so, readers will have fun imagining the animal's physical experience with those clumsy soldier-beasts and silly natives, and many will spot the parallels with slaves and indentured immigrants torn from their roots, never to return. HazelRochman. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.