Nikolaus Heidelbach Königin Giesela (Queen Gisela) Beltz & Gelberg, February 2006, 32 pp ISBN: 3-407-79906-3 One summer a father takes his young daughter on holiday to the seaside. Every night he tells another instalment of a story about a shipwrecked girl called Gisela - 'almost like me' - and her adventures on an island inhabited by meerkats. To begin with they kindly bring her food and build her a splendid shelter, but the girl's requests grow more outrageous by the day - she wants to be their queen, she declares. She leads the life of Riley until one day she goes too far - she demands a bikini made of meerkat skin. Disgruntlement turns to imaginative rebellion as the meerkats show their sharp little teeth… A tale about the closeness of a father and daughter and the power of storytelling, and Heidelbach's pictures can't fail to delight. A wealth of detail that children will love and a wonderfully expressive troupe of meerkats make this a book to treasure.