Savannah Fever: Warthogs and Wildebeests and and Zebras. Oh My!

The kids have a favorite new book, Graeme Base's Jungle Drums. We picked it up at the library's book sale mainly because there is an animal playing drums on the cover, one of Bud's favorite instruments. I recognized the author/illustrator's name and style from the book Animalia, which I've seen but haven't read much with the kids.

But we've read Jungle Drums a lot. Everyday, several times a day. It's about "the smallest warthog in Africa," teased by all the other animals, who receives magic drums that grant wishes from a wise wildebeest. Of course, as with all wish-granting objects, these don't always work the way you expect, and soon all the animals in the savannah are missing their trademark features--spots, stripes, plummage, etc--and then exchanged them with others. By the end, it all goes back to normal and everyone gets along, celebrating with the Grande Parade.

Well, not quite normal. Because as Base notes at the back of the book, none of the animals are the same as they were, exactly. And there's something else: hidden images of the wildebeest exist in the bushes, branches, clouds, and reflections, at least one on every illustrated spread. At first, I could only see the one in the moon, but together we've found all of them.

The kids love looking for the hidden wildebeest and proudly point to her image when they find it. "Oh, this is the tricky page," they'll say. Or, "it's the easy moon page." And the search leads to more existential questions--"is that the real wildebeest?" "how come she's made out of leaves?" "why is she magic?" We try to explain the author's conception of the sagacious, magical wildebeest overseeing and guiding the young warthog's search for acceptance gone awry, explaining how the wildebeest is magic, how we're seeing her spirit hiding in nature helping out. But that's just perhaps a little abstract.

Which is fine with me. We've read the story, we've found the hidden pictures, but we can grow with the message and meanings of the book for a long time to come.