What the Parrot Told Alice
By Dale Smith

If the US government reacted strongly to “The Day After Tomorrow,” let’s hope our representatives, or at least their children, read WHAT THE PARROT TOLD ALICE.

The beginning reminds one of “Brother Bear”. A young man is transformed into a parrot to atone for a crime against nature. The young man-turned-parrot ends up, Lorax-style, in the home of Alice Smith, a preteen who, although bright, has no idea of the environmental devastation her species, namely humans, wreaks upon tropical birds and rainforests. Bo Parrot, Alice’s parrot guide, magically transforms himself into several parrots with attitudes, including Carmen Macaw, a Carmen Miranda-type bird who tells Alice of the dangers of “parrot ranches,” environmentally a step above puppy mills but not much better. Alice might well sing with Phil Collins as she takes a look through a parrot’s eyes at the demand for wild birds that provides money for poor Third World countries and satisfies Western demand for exotic wildlife. However, as the Living Desert near this reviewer’s home demonstrates through a serval that was once an exotic pet, wild things may be better off left in the wild.

While naysayers may decry WHAT THE PARROT TOLD ALICE as propaganda for young minds, you can’t go wrong when you’ve got Dr. Seuss as a trailblazer for kids’ eco-fiction. Although today’s children recycle, the public tends to forget wake-up calls in favor of short-term thinking, e.g., the War on Terror, and looks for quick fixes. While the book and its sequel present grim and what this reviewer thinks of as exaggerated portraits of man’s inhumanity to the whole universe, no one would deny that it’s important to turn kids’ attention away from the latest fads in music and get them interested in the larger world. If the young people Smith reaches are anything like the bright Alice (and remember, we only hear about the school shooters and dropouts), this book will provide an imaginative gateway to thinking about the future of life on this planet as we know it…and as we want it to be…straight from the parrot’s mouth, right to our hearts.