Synopses & Reviews
Review
McDonald's story is wonderfully alive, with the Keys exotic but available. It is full of love, independence, and natural law, and the slice of biogeography can't hurt. (Kirkus Reviews)
Review
With a well-developed character on an intriguing odyssey, THE NIGHT IGUANA LEFT HOME will stir the imaginations of armchair travelers. (Horn Book, September/October 1999)
Review
This narrative... explains that friends sometimes must separate but reassures that love can endure across many miles. (Publishers Weekly)
Review
This inventive tale will guarantee grins. (School Library Journal)
Review
In this thoroughly serious, tongue-in-cheek hilarious look at life, a scaly rascal figures out how to have her cake and eat it, too--think time share! (Charlotte Parent)
Review
Sascha and Iguana and I have run away to Key West. Sascha is 4, I am not, and Iguana is the heroine of The Night Iguana Left Home, by Megan McDonald, illustrated by Ponder Goembel, a book we are reading in the shade of an ylang-ylang tree. Iguana's story is a familiar one: she was living contentedly in Schenectady, NY, at the home of her "friend and almost sister," Alison Frogley, who provided a closet with a heating pad, a free library card, a personal e-mail address and plenty of anchovy pizza. Nonetheless, Iguana began to peel and crack and droop. Then she noticed a poster in Alison's room: "Key West." "Florida! No passport necessary!", she thought. "Iguana woke up the next morning and added an n to her name. Iguanna, she scrawled, in cursive, in the steam of the bathroom mirror. Then she kissed it." Then, having spiked her hair, she took the bus south. "For a short time, Iguana lived the high life.... She ate snails and caviar, papaya and mustard greens, hibiscus flowers. And gravel for dessert." Alas, it ended as unconsidered flights to Key West so often do. The money ran out, and Iguana had to wash dishes in a restaurant. One night, she realized that Gallina de Palo on the menu meant iguana stew. She swam for her life up the keys to Big Pine, where she found a job licking "60 stamps a minute" at the post office. A few days later Iguana mailed herself back for a visit with her true friend. Sascha is a little young for some of the more sophisticated bits (she perfectly understood the hair spiking, but was confused by the idea of gravel for dessert), but it doesn't matter. This enchanting book, marvelously written (and obviously thoroughly researched) by McDonald, and gloriously illustrated by Goembel (Iguana surfing is a masterpiece), is destined to become for Key West what ducklings are to Boston and Eloise is to New York. (New York Times Book Review, Starred Review)
Review
McDonald's clever story seamlessly weaves iguana facts into the into the text. The details are so realistic, you start to believe an iguana could wash dishes. (Connecticut Post)
About the Author
Megan McDonald grew up in Pittsburgh, the youngest of five girls. She attended Oberlin College and the Center for Study of Children's Literature in Boston, graduating with a BA in Children's Literature. Later, she received her MLS from the University of Pittsburgh. Ms. McDonald has written several picture books, a beginning reading series and one young adult novel. Her most recent titles for DK Ink are The Bone Keeper, illustrated by Brian Karas and, The Night Iguana Left Home illustrated by Ponder Goembel. She lives in Sebastopol, California, with her husband. Ponder Goembel illustrated "Hi, Pizza Man!" by Virginia Walter, one of School Library Journal's recent 100 "sleepers too good to miss," and Brian Swann's collection of riddle-poems, A Basket Full of White Eggs. Her fanciful art appears regularly in Ladybug magazine. She lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.