Horse Song: The Naadam of Mongolia

by Ted Lewin, Betsy Lewin

Overview

Ted and Betsy Lewin’s illustrated travelogue story of their trip to Mongolia to watch young boy and girl jockeys race horses in the traditional Naadam summer festival.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620141854
Publisher:	Lee & Low Books, Inc.
Publication date:	10/20/2014
Series:	Adventures Around the World Series: The Travelogues of Ted and Betsy Lewin
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	870L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 Years

Editorial Reviews

Gr 2-6- This colorful travelogue recounts the Lewins' trip to Mongolia to experience the annual summer celebration Naadam, in particular the horse-racing competition. It focuses on young Tamir as he prepares for and participates in the event. Information about Mongolian culture and the holiday's traditions are interspersed with an account of the competition. An introduction provides brief background, and unfamiliar terms are explained in context and in the glossary. Betsy Lewin's lively line-and-wash cartoon sketches and spot drawings are intermingled with Ted Lewin's sweeping watercolor paintings, which make effective use of light and rich color to portray both the intensity of the competition and the pageantry of the celebration. For the most part, the writing is tight and fast-paced, reflecting the event it describes. At other times, it becomes flowery and chatty. While perhaps not an essential purchase, the book provides a dynamic view of a culture rarely portrayed in children's books and an event that is sure to interest many young readers.-Heide Piehler, Shorewood Public Library, WI

School Library Journal

Visiting another exotic corner of the world, the well-traveled Lewins report on a stay in a camp of nomadic horse trainers, climaxed by a gloriously chaotic 14-mile children's horse race during the Naadam-a summer athletic festival that, after the Olympics, is the oldest in the world. Mongolia may be thinly populated (getting to the camp required a long plane flight, followed by "eight hundred bumpy, roadless miles in a minivan") but it is evidently not all that isolated. Some of the young riders in the bright, realistic illustrations are clad in traditional deels, others in jeans and T-shirts, while in one interior scene (of a dwelling properly called a "ger," not a yurt) a modern teakettle shines amid beautifully painted furniture and elaborately patterned fabrics. Closing with pages of additional facts and observations, this sojourn will not only take armchair travelers to the other side of the planet, it'll make them feel comfortable and welcome when they arrive. (glossary) (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)

Kirkus Reviews

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