Like the previous two books, this story about a Neanderthal family in the stone age shows what their daily life and challenges might have been like, and also how much like us they probably were- concerned about their family members, annoyed by younger siblings, preferring to have fun than doing boring tasks, etc. Andy and his sister Lucy in this story are still friends with the kids from group of humans, but they now also encounter another small group of Neanderthals, who act friendly in a suspicious way. Our family struggles with getting along in close quarters during rainy spells, the kids train for hunts by some of them pretending to be prey animals, they find dinosaur bones and speculate what the huge skull might have belonged to- and collect some specimens to drag back to their cave. Just because it’s cool. They have to keep things clean (and get a few very short haircuts- making a few characters almost unrecognizable-) to control head lice, try to find ways to make gathering food plants easier, encounter a wooly rhino (and accidentally lead it too close to home), mourn the death of one kid’s pet frog (leading into a discussion of what Neanderthal burial rights might have consisted of, if they had any), and find clever ways to prevent that other Neanderthal group from stealing their stuff. All parts of the story lead into two or three-page spreads of present-day scientist characters discussing things to show the reader what current knowledge we have on the subject, and the end of the book has even more pages of facts. Oddly though, there are a few more bits of storyline interspersed in those fact pages. I didn’t quite get that placement.
Another thing that slightly bugged me through the whole series, was that the Neanderthals didn’t look much different from the humans. Even though the characters kept saying how the humans were taller and had longer arms and legs, really they all had the exact same stature in the pictures. Just that the humans had longer faces, but otherwise it was hard to tell the species apart if you didn’t know from the storyline.
Borrowed from the public library. Completed on 7/14/24.