Kidogo

So you may have noticed in some of the comments from last week mention of a newspaper article. Yep, Maya and I made it big (sort of). Mayareads got a nod in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Father's Day.

The article is about dads who blog. There are some interesting ones I've since looked up, and I've actually been emailing with one of the bloggers. Here's a link to the article:

http://www.twincities.com/ci_9566588?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com

For those of you who found us through the article, welcome. Sorry to everyone for taking so many days off. We were blessed to have my brother, sister and their three girls with us all week. Just too busy having fun. But see above how Maya's cousins helped us out?

Today's book is about a tiny elephant who isn't content with being small. Kidogo, by Anik McGrory, evokes the vast, open regions of Africa and introduces us to many of the animals found there.

Kidogo (which according to the opening page means 'little') lives with so many large elephants who help him through his day. But he doesn't want to be helped. He doesn't want to be the smallest.

Kidogo goes searching for an animal his size. He doesn't find it obviously in the giraffe, hippo, or lion. But as he tries to make his own dust bath, he spies some ants. He helps them the way his parents had done for him (although the dust bath doesn't seem very popular).

In the end Kidogo realizes he isn't the smallest after all.

McGrory, who according to her bio spent time living in East Africa, does a wonderful job through words and pictures of establishing place for us. This is a very sweet book with a great deal of opportunity for further discussion about any number of new topics.