Big Game (32 page)

As we did, Kristi Sullivan asked, “Does anyone know what we're going to name the baby?”

“I think we ought to let Teddy have the honor,” J.J. said.

Everyone turned to me, seeming to like the idea.

Even Mom seemed to have forgiven J.J. For at least a little while. “Any ideas?” she asked.

I turned to Summer. “What's your middle name?”

“Jade.”

“I like it,” I said, then looked to everyone else. “How about ‘Jade'?”

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the group. Mom looked from me to Summer, then smiled knowingly.

“I'm kind of partial to that name myself,” J.J. said. “Jade it is.”

Summer blushed again. “C'mon. The car's parked all the way up by the front gates.”

We set off through the Asian Plains, walking side by side. Somewhere along the way, we started holding hands. And we stayed like that all the way through FunJungle.

It's not an exaggeration to say that rhinos could disappear from the earth in your lifetime. In the last fifty years, the number of rhinos on earth has declined dramatically. One subspecies, the northern African black rhino, has gone extinct, while there are fewer than one hundred Sumatran rhinos left in the wild—and fewer than fifty Javan rhinos. And in the year it took me to write this book, the number of northern African white rhinos dropped to
five
left in the entire world. Meanwhile, in recent years, cases of poaching have doubled in southern Africa. There's a human cost too: More than a thousand park rangers have died fighting poaching in the past decade.

And the saddest part of all this is that the slaughter is pointless. It is funded by people who think that rhino horn has curative powers, when there is no scientific proof of that at all.

As I pointed out in this book, how to best protect rhinos is a complicated issue. There are advocates for legalized hunting, dehorning rhinos in the wild, educating people so they won't buy rhino horn products anymore—and many other methods. But everyone agrees that the situation is critical. The rhinos need your help. Now.

For more information on what you, your friends, and your school can do to keep rhinos from going extinct, visit
rhinos.org
and
savetherhino.org
.

Sadly, the elephants discussed in this book are being poached in the wild as well. Nearly one hundred a day are killed. You can find ways to help them at sites like
96elephants.org
and
awf.org
.

And if you're interested in helping protect other animals as well as rhinos—or critical habitats—all around the world, check out the websites of these wonderful organizations.

World Wildlife Fund:
worldwildlife.org

The Nature Conservancy:
nature.org

Center for Biological Diversity:
biologicaldiversity.org

Thanks!

Stuart Gibbs

Also by Stuart Gibbs

The FunJungle Series

Belly Up

Poached

The Spy School series

Spy School

Spy Camp

Evil Spy School

The Moon Base Alpha series

Space Case

The Last Musketeer

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2015 by Stuart Gibbs

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Book design and principal jacket illustration by Lucy Ruth Cummins

Endpaper art by Ryan Thompson

The text for this book is set in Adobe Garamond Pro.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gibbs, Stuart, 1969–

Big game / Stuart Gibbs. — First edition.

pages cm

Sequel to: Poached.

Summary: “Someone is trying to hunt FunJungle's Asian greater one-horned rhinoceros, and twelve-year-old Teddy Fitzroy is on the case.”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4814-2333-5 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4814-2335-9 (eBook)

[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Zoos—Fiction. 3. Zoo animals—Fiction. 4. Rhinoceroses—Fiction. 5. Endangered species—Fiction. 6. Poaching—Fiction.]

I. Title.

PZ7.G339236Bi 2015

[Fic]—dc23

2014042145