High on a mist-wrapped mountain, a mother panda cradles her newborn, pink and impossibly small. The bamboo patch they need for food is dying, and as soon as her baby is old enough, they must seek a new home, sleeping in trees and swimming across icy streams along the way. Nick Dowson’s lyrical text, interspersed with intriguing facts, follows one of nature’s most magnificent — and endangered — species on its search for a safe habitat, while Yu Rong’s expressive, delicate brushwork brings these legendary creatures to life.
PreS-Gr 3- A poetic text describes a newborn cub, "Small as a pinecone,/pink as a blob of/wriggling sunset..." and continues to depict his mother and their habitat throughout this lyrical picture book. As the book progresses, readers learn that baby pandas are 900 times smaller than their mothers, and that it takes four years for them to reach maturity. When the cub is six months old, he and his mother leave their den to look for bamboo groves. On their journey the mother protects her cub from a wild dog, teaches him to swim, and finally introduces him to his first taste of bamboo when they reach their new home. The book never anthropomorphizes the animals, and the expressive text makes this an ideal book for sharing aloud. Specific facts about pandas and their habitat, set off by red brackets in italicized text, are included throughout the book. Rong's lovely watercolor illustrations, executed in traditional Chinese techniques, enhance the graceful qualities of this book and are an ideal accompaniment to the text. The gentle hues subtly shift and change with the seasons and even the illustrations of stark winter landscapes are elegant and refined. Watercolor illustrations of bamboo branches on rice paper serve as sophisticated endpapers and set the tone for this thoughtful picture book.-Shawn Brommer, South Central Library System, Madison, WI
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Overview
High on a mist-wrapped mountain, a mother panda cradles her newborn, pink and impossibly small. The bamboo patch they need for food is dying, and as soon as her baby is old enough, they must seek a new home, sleeping in trees and swimming across icy streams along the way. Nick Dowson’s lyrical text, interspersed with intriguing facts, follows one of ...