Elephant Quest (Adventures Around the World) - Softcover

TED and BETSY LEWIN have been traveling the world together for decades and have chronicled many of their wide-ranging adventures in books for young readers. They both have won numerous awards and honors for their books, including Caldecott Medal Honors, ALA Notables, New York Times Best Illustrated Books, and School Library Journal Best Books. When not teaching, visiting with young fans, or traveling, the Lewins are usually drawing and painting in their Brooklyn, New York, home studios.

Following the successful format of their first collaboration, Gorilla Walk (1999), the Lewins share their four-day search to observe African elephants firsthand. The enthusiastic, conversational text, vivid with descriptive detail, relates each morning and late-afternoon venture within the Moremi Reserve in Botswana. Elephants elude them the first three days and the beginning of the fourth, but they encounter hippos, lions, kudus, wild dogs, warthogs, Cape buffalo, and giraffes aplenty. Then on day four success: 'Suddenly, shrill trumpets sound behind every tree. We've found the elephants at last! In a pool deep in the mopane scrub, the giants of this garden squeal and splash and flap their ears, looking as joyful as we feel.' The small field sketches, providing visual details of their adventure, are a perfect complement to the lush, realistic watercolor spreads of the wildlife in their habitat. A beginning hand-drawn map sets the location, and two pages of facts about these largest of land mammals and an index conclude the attractive package. A winner that transports the reader to an unfamiliar locale full of wonder. --Kirkus Reviews

Botswana's Moremi Reserve, with its grasslands muddy and lush from flooding rains, is the setting for the Lewins' latest wildlife quest. As in Gorilla Walk (1999), they provide a day-byday account of their search in economical text, deft sketches, and fine watercolor views of animals encountered along the way. The search for elephants takes four days of close meetings with a hippo, lions, kudus, wild dogs, impalas, warthogs, Cape buffalo, giraffes, a male leopard, lechwe, wildebeest, and other denizens of the delta. The daily ventures are made in 'a special Hilux truck that can plow through water like a hippo,' the only sign of human intrusion in the vast, watery delta. Though the authors and their guide are shown briefly, the emphasis is strictly on the splendid animals encountered each day. The richness of landscape is only broadly suggested in the bright, hazy scenes. Bits of drama unfold as the authors describe the tensions between predators and their prey. The final bold encounter with the elephants is a more satisfying denouement than the brief glimpse of the gorillas in the earlier foray. An introductory map, two informative concluding pages of elephant facts, and an index round out this beautifully rendered introduction to the region's wildlife and ecology that is also a tantalizing adventure story. --School Library Journal