The story’s main character is Carlito, a 9 year old Chicago boy, whose father is a conservationist at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago . When Carlito’s dad tells the family that he has been offered a position teaching conservation for a year at the University of Guayaquil in Ecuador , everyone is excited. But Carlito and his sister, Tanya, hate leaving their friends and their school to go to a strange country where they will know no one. What will they encounter in a new country? Will they have new friends?