The Night Iguana Left Home

Everyone -- even a lizard -- needs a vacation now and then.... Even though her "almost sister" Alison mists the room daily with salt spray and sees to it that Iguana has a closet with a heating pad, a free library card, and her own e-mail address, the pet is restive (and peeling). It's winter in Schenectady, and Iguana wants sun -- just what's promised by a travel poster for Key West, Florida. Emboldened, she writes a good-bye to Alison, signing her name "Iguana," and, despite her innate fear of dogs, boards a Greyhound bus headed south, where she has a blast. When her funds dwindle, Iguana takes a dishwashing job, only to learn to her horror that the restaurant's Friday night special is iguana stew and the chef's run out of his principal ingredient. Meanwhile, Alison pines in the snow belt, hardly guessing at the dramatic turn her pet's life has taken. The story is wittily wild (but the iguana facts -- she separates from her tail while fleeing the restaurant's dog -- are all sound science), the pictures burst with our heroine's grand style and pluck, and the ending -- courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service -- is happy for all.