Saturday, June 2, 2012

Kami and the Yaks – Andrea Stenn Stryer

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.

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