A young African hunter and his clever dog have various adventures, including saving the life on an Emir and a chieftain (the latter being his own father).
I liked this one much more than I expected to, honestly. Funny and engaging, and the young Garram is extremely likable. ( )

Chosen as a Newbery Honor Book in 1931 - other titles to be so distinguished that year include Floating Island, The Dark Star Of Itza, Queer Person, Mountains Are Free, Spice and the Devil's Cave, Meggy MacIntosh: A Highland Girl in the Carolina Colony, and Ood-Le-Uk the Wanderer - Herbert Best's Garram the Hunter follows its eponymous young hero as, concerned for his father's welfare, he goes into a self-imposed exile, far from his home in the hills. The son of Warok, the chief of the tough, independent Hillmen, Garram is a boy in age, but a man in habits, silently hunting on his own, rather than having anything to do with the other youths, who follow the false braggart, Menud. When Menud and his wealthy father, Sura, bring a false accusation of theft and goat-rustling against Garram, in order to discredit his father, the young hunter easily disproves the allegations, but discovers that his enemies continue to work against him. Advised by his tribe's priest, the Rainmaker, that he should remove himself for a time, in order to protect Warok - the theory being that, without an heir presumptive, the chief will be safe from Sura and Menud's plotting - Garram leaves the village of Kwallak behind, and, finding himself on the western plain, makes his way to the great walled city of Yelwa. Here, surrounded by the Fulani people, he makes both friends and enemies, eventually finding a place for himself in the court of the Emir. But when the time comes, he knows he must return once again to the Hills, to free his father and aid his own people...

It is an unfortunate reality that many of these early Newbery titles (like vintage children's fiction in general) have some pretty sharply anachronistic social content, and often depict non-European or European-descended peoples in egregiously racist ways. Books like The Great Quest, with its "accidental" slave voyage to Africa, or Queer Person, with its counter-to-fact depiction of the Crow Nation practicing human sacrifice, in their Sun Dance observances, are particularly noteworthy in this respect. Of course, there are also a few older Newberies, from The Dark Star Of Itza: The Story Of A Pagan Princess, with its epic tale of inter-city warfare, in medieval Meso-America, to Pran Of Albania, with its story of a proud and independent mountain people fending off those who would invade and conquer them, that treat non-Europeans (or, in the case of "Pran," non-western Europeans) with respect. I wasn't sure, going in, which category Garram the Hunter: A Boy of the Hill Tribes would fall into, but given the setting in Africa, I suspected it would be the former.

Happily, this was not the case, and I can report that, save for one odd comment, approximately eighty pages in, about the "cruel nature" of Africans (one of the few narratological interruptions in a story told almost exclusively from Garram's perspective), Garram the Hunter is free of condescension and racist over-(or under)tones. Its hero is an engaging, if somewhat over-idealized character, and the events depicted are fascinating, giving an insight into a time and place not often depicted in American children's fiction. What is that time and place? Best doesn't specify, but given the mention of conflicts between the Fulani and the Hillmen, involving slave raids conducted by the former, I suspect that it is early nineteenth-century Nigeria, in the mountainous northeastern region now dominated by Gashaka-Gumti National Park. The contrasting of the pagan Hill people, and the Muslim Fulani here was quite interesting, particularly as it demonstrated the diversity of belief and culture, in just this one small corner of Africa - something that is often lost on authors of the time (as well as today), who erroneously assume a sort of uniformity amongst all Africans.

All in all, a surprisingly engaging read, one I would recommend to young readers of today, if they enjoy adventure stories, and/or historical fiction! ( )