Beep

June 10, 2024
In the uplifting latest from Roorbach (Lucky Turtle), a girl and a monkey forge a life-altering friendship. The narrator, Beep, a restless squirrel monkey in a Costa Rican rainforest, leaves his family and sets out to find a mate, climbing his way toward a smoking volcano. There, he meets a girl named Inga, who’s visiting with her family from New York City. She feeds him pineapple before stowing him in her bag. The two communicate via grunts and agree that Inga will smuggle Beep home to Manhattan. Beep gets his footing there after chatting with squirrels in Central Park, dodging dogs, and, together with Inga, emancipating the animals on display at the Bronx Zoo. Amid the commotion, they take shelter behind the robes of two Buddhist monks, who impart advice to them about the value of loving and respecting all animals. As Beep’s relationship with Inga deepens, he learns more about himself and the world around him and resumes his quest to meet a mate. Roorbach maintains a steady supply of entertaining wordplay, as Beep phonetically reproduces what he overhears (“ladies and gentleman” comes through as “labies and genitalmen”), and the portrayal of Beep and Inga’s friendship convinces. Animal lovers will savor this. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman Literary.

June 1, 2024
Beep, a squirrel monkey "three rainy seasons" old has become restless. It is time to make his mark, set out from the Costa Rican land of his current troupe, and "spread his genetic material." Beep's troupe warned him of the dangerous structures built by the "You-mens," and Roorbach masterfully imbues his simian narrator with a voice full of innocence and trepidation. Beep does not get far before he spies the vacationing 11-year-old Inga enjoying a snack and implores her for a piece of delicious pineapple. Soon the adventure begins as Inga sneaks Beep into her backpack when her family returns to Manhattan. With Beep discreetly hidden in Inga's stroller, the two friends share walks around "Central Pargh"" during which Beep describes many you-men activities. Roorbach (Lucky Turtle, 2022) expertly balances the whimsical with the philosophical as Beep describes the world with a sense of wonder, alternating between baby talk such as "I wubboo" to giving thanks after eating a slug off the sidewalk in "appreciation of the gastropodic sacrifice." An inspiring quest tale and imaginative bildungsroman that celebrates the natural world.

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June 15, 2024
A monkey goes on a journey to save the planet. The novel is narrated by Beep, a squirrel monkey living in what we eventually learn is Costa Rica. We know from the beginning, however, that his troupe is aware of a world beyond its rainforest that contains other monkeys, and that a prophecy promises "a monkey one day will come along whose accidental courage will reunite us, even save the world." That monkey turns out to be Beep in this good-natured fantasy, which launches when he leaves his troupe to find a mate. Shortly after, he meets up with Inga, an 11-year-old girl who befriends Beep when he tries to grab some pineapple from a table outside her family's vacation home in Costa Rica. Soon he's unwittingly in Inga's "noopsook" on a "roarbird" bound for New York. Beep's rendering of various "you-men" words is initially distracting, especially since his narration implausibly uses others like "tween" and "inanimate" with no problem. The language becomes less jarring and the pace picks up in NYC when Beep and Inga take a trip to the "Bronzoo." An extended scene in which they evade the "Greenies" (aka guards) and start opening cages is well paced and exciting, with the tension ratcheted up as the police arrive and tranquilizer guns are deployed against the growing horde of freed animals. Roorbach depicts animals communicating across species, and a minority of humans led by Inga who can understand them, as a means to lead his plot toward a feel-good denouement. Not every reader will be charmed by Beep's mannered voice or persuaded even fictionally by his odyssey, but Roorbach's vision of a world despoiled by human waste and carelessness is grimly plausible, and his hope for a better future is no doubt shared by all. Pleasant enough, for those who buy the concept of delving into an animal's thought process.

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