Boris, Babette und lauter Skelette

In this entertaining book, Tanja Esch approaches the subject of the search for identity and "otherness" in an amusing and natural way. Boris receives his neighbour Lynette's pet "hamster", which she bought at a pet shop a long time ago. But Babette isn’t a hamster, and other attempts to assign her to an animal species fail too. Babette is yellow, can talk and is drawn to creepiness and skeletons. Boris's request for a pet is rejected by his parents - his mother works all the time, is affectionate but distracted, his father is always cleaning and is excessively tidy. So Boris goes to his grandfather, who lives with lots of stuffed animals. He helps Boris carve "bones" out of branches and build Babette's first skeleton. Babette eventually moves in with the grandfather, who tells her about the "otherness" that he experienced as a dark-skinned immigrant in the 1970s.