First Come the Zebra

Review
By PaperTigers

Barasch’s superb watercolors depict Kenya’s wide savannahs, distinctive animals, and very human interactions. A double page of individual gazelles, leaping, nursing, feeding, and resting on bits of green gives a sense of both the vast and the particular in her story. A final illustration of the boys on the savannah at sunset, listening to distant hoofbeats that signal the start of another great migration, captures her optimism about peace among Kenya’s tribes. . . . Barasch has said that she finds hope in the youth of Kenya, who chat online about breaking down traditional tribal hostilities. In Abaani and Haki, she offers children appealing role models for making peace with neighbors and protecting their environment in the process. —PaperTigers.org