Illustrated by Bert Dodson
Bay Otter Press, Palo Alto, 2007
HC $16.95
Rating: 4
48 pages
Endpapers: brick
red
Large Book
Title Page: Double
page, left is illustrations of houses on the mountainside, right is solid navy
with mustard and white font
Illustrations:
Really beautiful. No white, pages
that have only font use beige fond on dark navy. Pictures are loarge and give the reader a
wonderful feel for the setting.
Setting: High in
the Himalayas of Nepal in small village
of sherpas, contemporary .
OSS: Kami helps
his father find their four missing yaks as a huge storm – thunder, lightning,
hail – approaches.
1st sentence/s: “High in a land where winds blow sonw clouds
off tall mountain peaks, Kami stepped out into the early morning dark. He sniffed the moistness.
Thoughts: It is
not revealed that Kami is deaf until the end of the fourth page, which firmly
establishes that his disability is a part of his persona, not the definer. He I, simply, a little boy that wants to help
his father as well as find the four yaks he knows so well.
Since I have a friend who, just recently, made it to base
camp at Mt. Everest, it made the story super-extra special. It is a fit introduction into my examination
of Nepal, Tibet, and the Himalayan region of Asia.
