I read this book for a Young Adult Book challenge. The task was to read two books that won award each from a different country's list. Stranger at Green Knowe won the Carnegie Medal. 
 I ended up liking this book more than I thought I would after reading the first twenty pages or so. I wasn't fond of the section told from the point of view of the Gorilla. Perhaps I'm too literal, but I'm not a huge fan of the anthropomorphizing of animal thought as narration. 
 Once Ping became the primary narrator I enjoyed the story much more. It's a fairly general boy and his animal story with the addition that the animal is not really the boys. On top of that primary story, there is the orphan looking for - and finding - a place to belong. Neither story is terribly ground breaking but the characters are fun enough to keep at least my interest. 
 I would not be adverse to reading the other Green Knowe Chronicles which I understand are more fantasy based (or possibly magic realism is a better term) than this one.