Review by Booklist Review
Ages 4^-6. In this well-crafted picture book, the stuffed animals surrounding a young girl sitting on her bed come alive as she ponders their lives and natural habitats in their native home of Africa. The two-part rhyming text sets the stage for her dreamlike trip, and a unique combination of watercolors and natural objects such as dried berries and leaves and pieces of rock and pebbles creates unusual collages that distinctively capture the essence of the animals and their environment. The integral detail of these highly original illustrations will generate much visual curiosity among young audiences as they listen to the pleasing story. --April Judge
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A young girl imagines a series of scenarios involving African animals set against a quasi-collage backdrop. Ages 4-7. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2A sense of realism combines with the delights of fantasy in this charming picture book. The illustrations of animals in their African environments move from lions in a brilliant sunset on the plains; to a viper in the deepening desert dusk; to monkeys in the starry jungle's darkness; to the rhinoceros and stalking cheetah on the grasslands before showing a moonlit scene of a child at home, in bed, surrounded by her stuffed animals. The double-page pictures were created from a watercolor base with added collage layers of painted figures and leaves, stones, dried flowers, and twine. The use of collage communicates a world of fantasy on the edge of dreaming, at the same time that the concreteness of the materials used and the dimensionality created by varying distances from the background make this world seem very real. Some of the featured animals are stylized torn-paper figures, while others are realistically detailed. A simple rhyming text accompanies each illustration: "Suspicious of each passing stranger,/ Buffalo looks for signs of danger./ Cautiously eyeing/ Buffalos spying." With a theme reminiscent of Ann Jonas's The Quilt (Greenwillow, 1984), the author and illustrator have created a mysterious, nonthreatening animal world of a child's imagination.Loretta Kreider Andrews, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Using brief rhymes, the text describes nine African animals. The final page shows a turbaned little girl going to bed, surrounded by her stuffed toys, each an animal from the text. The verses lack vitality, and although the collages, using paper, string, stones, and dried flowers, are more effective, they include animals not found in Africa, such as a macaw. From HORN BOOK 1996, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
