Lulu and the Others: A True Story - Eliot Schrefer - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Eliot Schrefer

NARRATOR: Karissa Vacker

GENRE: Children's Picture Book.

PUBLICATION DATE: March 10, 2026

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A picture book telling the true story of a bonobo who was released back into the wild. Good story, though somewhat bittersweet.

Plot Preview:

Lulu spent fifteen years in a human home. While she enjoyed flipping through magazines and comics, she also was lonely when they all left for work/school. One day, the humans decide that it's time to return Lulu to a bonobo community. Lulu takes some time to adjust to the "others" because all these years, she's been more human than bonobo. But the bonobos don't give up on her and soon, she assimilates herself with them. And when the time comes, she extends the same courtesy to newer members of the troop.

Author Eliot Schrefer is a wildlife expert and award-winning author. During a visit to the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the only country in the world where this endangered ape is found in the wild), he learnt the story of a bonobo orphan named Mimi, who was raised by a human family and later released to the wild. This transition was not at all easy, as Mimi just didn’t realise that she was of a different species from her human family. It took a long time for her to adapt to her new bonobo community.

Schrefer decided to write this debut picture book as a reminder that wild animals should never be kept as pets. Thankfully for little readers, he skips the more upsetting part of Mimi’s story and presents a very sanitised version of the truth. I learnt the actual events only through an interview he had with the ‘Friends of Bonobos’ group. (<i>You can read the interview HERE.</i>) But because of this removal of the disturbing facts, the intended moral of the book – to stop wild animals from being kept as pets – doesn’t come across convincingly. The story feels more like a joyful repatriation attempt than like a reminder of what goes wrong when good intentions are backed by poor logic.

Despite the trimming out of the troubling facts, this picture book is still somewhat sad. Perhaps ‘bittersweet’ would be a better adjective because I felt happy about the bonobo's ultimate fate but not about how tough it was for her to adapt to her new surroundings and companions. Humans and bonobos have 98.7% of their DNA in common, so she was clearly in a comfortable place even with humans. I wish her human parents had realised much before fifteen years that she would be better off with her own species. Being returned after 15 years of human companionship is almost criminal!

The text is in Lulu’s third-person POV, which helps us get an insight into her conflicting emotions during the difficult transition. The language is quite easy for young readers to understand.

The author’s note at the end offers more details on what the main story fails to clarify, such as how Lulu came to be with the humans in the first place. But I’d have liked for this to be a part of the main plot itself. After all, younger kids don’t read author’s notes; it’s too complex for them.

I requested this book strictly on the strength of its cover art and title. It is only after the approval that I realised that this was an audiobook. 🤭 I prefer reading picture books because to me, illustrations are as important to picture books as the text is. Listening to them makes me feel like I missed out on something vital. So I took a quick peek at the illustrations through the sample images on Edelweiss+. From the limited graphics I saw, the illustrations seem really cute, with the colour pencil style giving a freshness to the artwork. Lulu’s expressions are captured well, though I must add that she looks more like a chimpanzee than a bonobo. (Both apes are quite similar, but bonobos have more black colouring on their visage.)

Does this mean that the audiobook is bad? Not at all! Clocking at just 7 minutes, the audiobook is voiced by Karissa Vacker. I have heard her voicing thrillers, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear her read a children’s book. She was amazing, voicing all the sentiments of the story at the perfect pitch. Children’s audiobooks need to have that extra level of emotions and energy to keep little listeners hooked, and Vacker does an outstanding job at this. The funky jungle music in the starting and ending sections is the icing on the cake of this audio. To those who prefer audiobooks for their little ones, I can definitely recommend the audio version.

Overall, this is a good story that uses a simple premise to offer some valuable lessons to its readers. It might work for animal-loving children and can be used at homes as well as in classrooms for discussions on animal behaviour and conservation. Suitable for ages 4-8.

My thanks to Harper Audio Children’s Books and Clarion Books for providing the ALC of “Lulu and the Others” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.