Peace of Wild

By Pearl White-Wolf and Lucy Rees

An enticing book for children of all ages.

Can animals communicate?

Can their voice be heard to make their plight known?

Are there still magical and mystical beings hidden from us?

Meet the charming animal characters representing endangered species, read their interesting, exciting, and informative adventures and stories.

What exactly is Javerwop?

The wonder of the wild, the magical and mystical all await you within the pages of this book!

Unfortunately, with the wonder, magical and mystical come the dark foes!

Which side will you take?

Will you answer the plea to help?

Mankind seems determined to destroy our beautiful world. They use and abuse nature’s abundance with no thought for the future.

Lady Eleanor and many of her animal friends have witnessed and experienced first-hand the devastation and destruction that can result.

Will people listen to their pleas?

A Fusion of Fact and Fiction

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398475403

Pearl White-Wolf

Pearl White-Wolf is the pen name of Margaret Ralph, nee Parr. Mother and Grandmother of Counsel of Wolves (Colin Ralph, Graham Ralph (deceased), Jeanne Hughes and Joanna Hughes). Colin, Graham, Jeanne and Jo wrote these stories in memory of Margaret Ralph and under the name of Pearl White-Wolf.

Book preview

About the Author

Pearl White-Wolf is the pen name of Margaret Ralph, nee Parr. Mother and Grandmother of Counsel of Wolves (Colin Ralph, Graham Ralph (deceased), Jeanne Hughes and Joanna Hughes). Colin, Graham, Jeanne and Jo wrote these stories in memory of Margaret Ralph and under the name of Pearl White-Wolf.

Dedication

This book is dedicated, in memoriam, to Margaret Ralph (nee Parr). Honorary author of this book as Pearl White-Wolf, beloved mother of Graham, Jeanne, and Colin; along with Margaret’s granddaughter, Joanna comprise the collaboration of the Counsel of Wolves.

Copyright Information ©

Pearl White-Wolf 2023

Illustrated by Lucy Rees

The right of Pearl White-Wolf and Lucy Rees to be identified as author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398475373 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398475380 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398475403 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781398475397 (Audiobook)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

We are extremely grateful to Graham, brother to Colin and Jeanne, and uncle to Jo, for sharing his inspirational ideas for this book with us. Our heartfelt thanks to his wife, Ann, for giving her blessing to our continuing the project following Graham’s untimely death.

Thank you to our family and friends who have supported us in our project.

We are particularly grateful to Lucy Rees for her beautiful watercolour illustrations.

Thank you also to Niamh Robinson, our eleven-year-old literary critic, for her perceptive comments.

Thank you to Austin Macauley for accepting our first book for publication, and for their support, patience and understanding in dealing with three novices.

Foreword

The concept for this book was triggered by a sequential chain of events, firstly, Graham Wise-Wolf was playing a word game to determine an animal representing each letter of the alphabet. Then he started giving these animals names, using alliteration. A flash of an idea came to him about a children’s book, focusing on endangered species. This idea, he bounced off his siblings, Jeanne and Colin Wise-Wolves, and niece Joanna Wise-Wolf. We jumped in with both feet. It was a great idea, and a great challenge. During a free-ranging brainstorm, the similarity between ‘Conversation’ and ‘Conservation’ came to the fore. This led to an inspiration to re-use revised lyrics from the song ‘A little less conversation’ from Elvis Presley. This is our theme tune.

A deep concern about the state of endangerment of many species, despite good work by the WWF and other sponsoring organisations, led to the thought, ‘Why don’t the animals have a say in all this? Why are they just victims?’

We, and I will explain who ‘we’ are, were prompted to do something. We decided to make it a children’s book, for concerned children of all ages. We wanted to influence, interest, educate, and encourage further research.

The lead characters are mainly animals but there are a few humans too, who all learn to communicate (you will have to read on, to understand how…) As with all creatures they have personalities. The facts and locations are all real. The stories are fables in this first book of a trilogy.

The author is designated as Pearl White Wolf, aka Margaret Ralph (nee Parr), RIP.

The ‘ghost’ writers are we, to whom I referred earlier. The book is a family collaboration.

The family name is Ralph, and the origin of this name is the Nordic, Ranulph. It is defined as meaning Counsel of Wolves, or Wise-Wolf. Margaret’s children are Graham, Jeanne and Colin, and Granddaughter Joanna. ‘We’ are the Counsel of Wolves, with significant contributions from children, grandchildren, cousins, and some close friends, especially Lucy who created the beautiful watercolours.

Please read on, and enjoy, and reflect, thank you.

Prologue

A little more conservation, a little more action please, said Lady Eleanor. I’m misquoting Elvis, but if everyone, or more realistically, just a little more of the world could participate in conservation in some way or another, I am certain that things could be turned around.

And now I’m going to misquote Dickens. We’re living in the best of times, in that there is more really effective conservation work going on than ever before. But also, in the worst of times, because there is more over-exploitation of the world’s resources going on than ever before. And, at the moment, it’s the exploiters who have the upper hand. That needs to change!

After a deep breath and a dramatic pause, Lady Eleanor continued with a wry smile, OK, that’s my opening rant over with. My apologies, I know I’m preaching to the converted, but I had to get that off my chest.

After another pause and with a more serious expression, Now, let’s get down to business.

Right, let’s be a bit more serious and get to the most urgent business. The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the closure of many of the smaller zoos, wildlife parks and other establishments, and I regret to say that there will be more to come. We’ve already seen an influx of displaced animals from across Europe into the Phoenix Zoo. And the same is happening in many other countries. We’re becoming overcrowded, and we are all being stretched to our limits and beyond.

Levi asked, So, what can we do? It sounds like we have to do something, but what? It would be an enormous undertaking if we are to take it on. And what about the rest of the world? Surely this is happening everywhere.

Lady Eleanor is encouraged by this response. You’re obviously right. It is really huge, and everybody needs to pitch in to make it happen, a lot of work for all of us.

We should lead the way, and we really need to make this a success to show the rest of the world that it is possible, and they can do it too. Lady Eleanor replied, Who’s in?

Levi was the first to respond: Yes, let’s make it happen! Slowly, everybody else followed suit. And then there was a not so brief pause, while they realised that they had just agreed to something humongous.

Everybody realised that there were major changes ahead, but they were inevitable. So, they started discussing among themselves what the ramifications would be.

Lady Eleanor gave them time to talk things over, and when the discussions had quietened down, she asked, Does anyone have any other issues they’d like to bring up?

Greg piped up, I’ve been talking to some of our new friends, and a lot of them are confused and disturbed about what has happened. Some, actually a disturbing number of them, were just tranquilised then woke up here, totally confused. Mostly they haven’t received an explanation they can understand. Or even in some circumstances they’ve not been told anything whatsoever. Some have been separated from their families. They deserve to know what’s going on.

Also, there are a lot of misunderstandings, largely resulting from two things:

"One simple miscomprehension, ‘Lost in Translation’ if you will. They are from all over, especially Eastern Europe.

Second miscomprehension, rumours are inevitable in situations like this, and they get distorted and exaggerated as they are passed on from one person to another. There’s a children’s game called ‘Chinese Whispers’ that illustrates this very well. A message is whispered into the ear of one child, who whispers it into the ear of the next, and so on along a chain. The last child states the message out loud, then the original one is announced. The two inevitably bear little comparison to each other. The longer the chain, the more bizarre it gets."

Sensing that Greg was leading up to something, Levi decided to set the stage for him. So how do you propose that we tackle this?

Greg responded in a rather dramatic, and comically smug, tone of voice: I have a cunning plan!

Javerwop

In a more serious tone, Greg continued: "To avoid misunderstandings we all need to speak the same language. Or what I’m actually proposing is two closely linked languages.

In Africa, some use a clicking language. And, by a strange coincidence, I was surprised to find out recently that reindeers talk to each other by clicking their knees – how weird?

For our immediate purposes, we could teach everybody a limited vocabulary. It would be difficult to misinterpret and would be fairly easy to learn. If it catches on, the vocabulary could be expanded, it is natural for languages to evolve."

Lady Eleanor smiled, I like the sound of that…pun absolutely intended! But you said two languages?

Yes, not all species would have, or may be limited in, the physical ability to use the clicking language. So, I’m proposing that we also use a form of sign language, where we use movements of our limbs and our bodies to communicate. Using the two in combination would, in my opinion, be a really powerful means of communication. Emily, in San Diego has been doing some successful research into this. I would be very interested in pursuing this.

I’m probably biased, as an avian, but I can actually see these two languages as becoming art forms. Song and dance.

Silence ensued.

Eventually Lady Eleanor responded, I absolutely love it…but I’m not sure that I’d be the best singer or dancer in the world.

If we go ahead with this, and I would really, really like to, we could introduce it here first, but then spread it further afield. Probably throughout Ireland and the UK, then Europe and then the world.

After a moment’s reflection, Lady Eleanor trumpeted in laughter, "I sound like a super-villain intent on global