Amidst the newspaper coverage of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004, there was a remarkable photo of a baby hippo snuggling against a giant tortoise. Moved by the story of Owen, the orphaned baby hippo who bonded with Mzee, a 130-year-old giant tortoise, Craig Hatkoff and his then six-year-old daughter, Isabella, contacted Dr. Paula Kahumbu, General Manager of Haller Park in Kenya, and the three collaborated on this striking color photo essay. In it, you see how hundreds of villagers from the small coastal town of Malindi worked together to rescue the 600-pound baby hippo from the coral reef where he was stranded and brought him to Haller Park, an animal sanctuary 50 miles away, where he encountered Mzee.
The authors state, "It is also a vivid reminder that even when the world seems its bleakest, we should never give up!" Ask your children to apply this statement to their own lives. The authors’ books Owen & Mzee: The Language of Friendship and Owen & Mzee: A Day Together (a color photo-filled board book to use with younger children) continue the story. For another account of Owen and Mzee's saga, see Jeannette Winter's moving picture book, Mama, which incorporates as its only text the words "mama" and "baby." Discuss how one story could inspire such different types of books—one factual, the other emotional—and compare how they complement each other.
Reviewed by JF.
Themes: ANIMALS. FRIENDSHIP. MOTHERS.
- This touching story of the power of a surprising friendship to mitigate the experience of loss is full of heart and hope.
- Wendy Lukehart, School Library Journal
- But children will nonetheless embrace the incident's compelling anthropomorphic elements, thoughtfully framed by the authors, and will exclaim over the images of the winsome baby and its grizzled surrogate parent.
- Jennifer Mattson, Booklist
- Remarkable seems too tame a word for this memorable book about a friendship between two wild creatures.
- Publishers Weekly