Holy racism, Batman! They gave a man the ability to talk to animals only to make the man and the animals racist. Yikes.

I hadn't read this book as a child, so I gave the free Google books edition a shot. It does not stand up to the passing of time, but it did lay the ground work for the modern iterations of the story, which are far less racist and far more entertaining.

The story was not particularly gripping, and leans very heavily on racial stereotypes and the idea that goodness is related to whiteness. It was definitely written with a younger audience in mind, in terms of sentence length and structure, pacing, and plot. I will not be recommending this to others