HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A DUCK IN A RAINCOAT?
By Etta Kaner, illustrated by Jeff Szuc, Kids Can, 32 pages, $14.95, ages 4 to 7
Have you ever seen a duck in a raincoat? Have you ever seen a jackrabbit in shorts? Have you ever seen a cheetah in soccer cleats? These are a few of the questions asked in this book, the first in the proposed Have You Ever Seen? series. The answer most of us would give is, "Of course not!" But take a gander and all will be revealed.
The jackrabbit, for instance, doesn't "wear shorts. People do." People wear shorts to keep cool during hot weather. How do rabbits keep cool? When they lie in the shade, the heat in their long, wide ears escapes into the cooler air surrounding them; as the ears become cooler, so does the rest of the jackrabbit's body.
Cheetahs in soccer cleats sounds a bit farfetched, but in fact a cheetah's claws are so long and strong that they dig into the ground, not unlike cleats, as the animal runs, giving it traction and helping it take strides that can be as long as four bathtubs laid end to end.
Cheery acrylic illustrations play the preposterous game to the hilt.
THE ORPHAN BOY
By Tololwa M. Mollel, illustrated by Paul Morin, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 40 pages, $21.95, ages 5 to 8
In 1990, The Orphan Boy won the Governor-General's Award for Illustration, and the book won several other awards in the following two years. Almost 20 years on, The Orphan Boy has been reissued with, as the publisher's blurb announces, a brand-new cover, eight additional pages and nine "breath-taking" new paintings. This is a case in which, for once, there is truth to the apparent hyperbole: more is more in this case, and it's more, especially, of Paul Morin's superb paintings.
Mollel's story is set amid the Maasai people of the Masai Mara in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Ingeniously, Paul Morin has incorporated Africa into his paintings, using gesso and a matrix of sticks and grit, gathered while he did research in Africa, to create a textured canvas and background for his art.
The paintings themselves occupy broad expanses of this book and conjure up a stunningly beautiful world of thorn trees silhouetted against inky-blue night skies, Masai cattle herds in a sere and yellow land, and the old man at the centre of this tale, with his weathered face and vermilion clothing.
Mollel, who now lives and works in Edmonton, is an Arusha Maasai who grew up on his grandfather's coffee farm in northern Tanzania. The Orphan Boy is his retelling of a Maasai legend about a star that fell to Earth and became a boy with magical powers. He appears before the old man one day, announcing that his name is Kileken, and that he is an orphan who has travelled countless miles in search of a home. The old man, lonely and childless, welcomes him.
The boy's presence in his life improves the old man's immeasurably: Morning chores are done by the boy before the elder wakes, and even during the drought his cattle grow fat. The old man's curiosity about the boy leads him into temptation and, breaking the trust that exists between the two of them, he spies on the boy, who, seeing him, explodes into a blinding star. That star, Venus, is what he was and what he becomes again.
The Maasai call Venus Kileken, the orphan boy, "who is up at dawn to herd out the cattle after morning chores, and who returns to the compound at nightfall for the evening milking."
A NEW LIFE
By Rukhsana Khan, illustrated by Nasrin Khosravi, Groundwood, 64 pages, $12.95, ages 8 to 11
