SuitabookThe Abominables
Eva Ibbotson
- Reading
- Pause after an encounter involving animals or hunters and ask what the characters value. Near the end, discuss whether the solutions feel convincing; the ending’s precise emotional effect is not established here.
- Themes
- Kindness towards vulnerable beings: Children and yetis respond to danger by helping others, while the narrative contrasts them with animal abusers and hunters. The moral direction clearly favours compassion, cooperation and protection of vulnerable creatures.
- Prejudice and belonging: The yetis are labelled as brutes or less than human, displaced from their hidden home and taken towards a hoped-for refuge. The treatment of the yetis presents hostile labelling and persecution as wrong, while refuge and recognition are treated sympathetically.
- Satire of hunting and cruelty: A hunters’ club occupies the intended safe home and plans to send the yetis to an Antarctic shoot; the book uses sharp, comic opposition. Hunters and animal abusers are overtly vilified, while the yetis’ gentleness and vegetarianism make the satirical contrast clear.
- Worth knowing
- Consider reading alongside a child who may find capture, shooting, threatened extinction, mistreated zoo animals or planned slaughter upsetting, even though much danger is presented comically and some situations resolve quickly.