Ostrich and Lark
On a recent visit to Botswana, award-winning poet Nelson met the San artists, whose ancestors, the first peoples of southern Africa, created rock paintings that date back thousands of years. Here six contemporary San artists illustrate Nelson’s original story with bright oil paint and collage images that show birds Ostrich and Lark in a hot country where “all day the sun glared out of cloudless blue.” Lark sings and Canary, Hornbill, and Mousebird, “the fancy-dressed suitors of the veld,” warble their “rain-shower jazz.” Silent Ostrich, though, is a large, quiet presence in every double-page spread, where he is shown dreaming of flying and singing. At last, Ostrich finds his voice as a rainstorm ends a drought—a “dusty monster of thirst.” Caught by the glowing art, children will want to explore the issues discussed in an introductory note about how the first hunter-gatherer peoples have been displaced by the farms and fences that have taken over their land and water. Grades K-3. --Hazel Rochman