The Black Mambas
The World’s First All-Woman Anti-Poaching Unit
by Kelly Crull
Millbrook Press, 2025. 42 pages.
Review written May 11, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review
The story told in this nonfiction picture book (for upper elementary school readers) is just plain cool.
The Black Mambas are a group of women park rangers who protect the wildlife of the Olifants West Nature Reserve in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.
The book explains the problem of poachers and how and why animals living in the reserve were being killed. Then it talks about local young women being recruited and learning the job – and the training and physically hard work they do to detect signs of poachers and stop them. Women are empowered to protect their communities.
This book is super informative and lavishly illustrated with photographs. It’s also inviting to young readers. Right at the front, there are head shots of twenty members of the Black Mambas, with their first names and the question, “Can you find all of us in the book?” They have little quizzes like identifying animal tracks and thinking how you would patrol given a map where poacher tracks have been found. (Note: Some of the quizzes seem a little too hard. On the page asking you to find “all four snares in this area,” I couldn’t find them at all and didn’t see a place with answers. Other simpler quizzes, like the one matching tracks, did have answers on the page.)
I especially liked the page with the Code of Honor. The reader is asked to “Stand proud and say these words with us.” The Code of Honor begins:
I am a Mamba hear me clear,
Poachers be warned, I have no fear.
Fauna and flora I pledge to protect,
There is always something to detect.
Eyes and ears serve the ground,
Here and there and all around.
From dusk to dawn, this promise I keep,
Protect the voiceless while they sleep.
The book includes photos of things they recovered at a poacher camp, as well as close-ups of the animals they protect (which are still dangerous).
They also have an educational component, teaching the children of surrounding villages to protect and take pride in their animal neighbors.
This is a gorgeous book about a group of women doing powerful and valuable work.
kellycrull.com
transfrontierafrica.org/blackmambas
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Nonfiction/help.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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