👍Once Upon a Camel (2021)

By Kathi Appelt

Pictures by Eric Rohmann

4Rbooks                                          4/6                              grades           5-8

Amazon                                           4.5/5                           grade level   3-7

Goodreads                                       3.76/5

Common Sense Media               not yet reviewed

315 pages

Synopsis

            Zada is a very old camel. She lives in West Texas with her friends Perlita, Pard, Whims, and Beulah, a family of kestrels. One day a haboob, vicious dust storm, is seen on the horizon. They need to escape before it traps them. Before they get away, Perlita and Pard, the parent kestrels, are caught up in a whoosh of wind and disappear into the sky.  Whims and Beulah, the kestrel chicks, climb onto Zada’s head as she heads for a cave she knows in the hillside.

            The cave is often used by a mountain lion but it is gone when they arrive. Zada and the chicks are okay, but the birds are scared. Zada tries to calm them by telling them stories, in particular, stories of how she, a former racing camel from Turkey, came to live in America.

            Over the next day, Zada and the chicks are able to escape from the cave and the mountain lion, outsmart a hawk, and find their way to the abandoned mission where there is water. Zada continues to tell the chicks her stories of Turkey, racing, coming on a ship to America, and then settling in Texas to work for the Army. Eventually she and her best friend, Asiye, are released by their handler and free to roam Texas on their own. During this time, Pard and Perlita are diligently working to free themselves from the wind, and a tumbleweed, to find each other, Zada, and their children.

Parental Guidelines:    low

Animals in danger from the dust storm, predators, and lack of food and water.

A difficult sea voyage for the camels coming to America.

Death of an animal.

Recommendation

            This novel introduced me to a piece of American history I never knew, the importation of camels to Texas by the army in 1856. They were experimenting using the camels as pack animals in the arid southwest.

Back in the “Whole Language” teaching days, this would have been a fantastic story to have children read through the into, through, and beyond stages. The extension activities are numerous: camels, camel racing, camels in Texas, Turkey, kestrels, haboobs, missions, etc. The vocabulary was also advanced at times with many words that will require a dictionary or the glossary in the back.  

            This book was divided into many small chapters 3-5 pages long, which made it an easy read. The chapters bounce back and forth between Zada and the chicks in 1910, Zada’s back story starting in the 1850’s, and a few with Perlita and Pard. The illustrations are excellent.