Dianne Hofmeyr

I thought this book was great! One reason I liked this book was that it showed all of the animals working together to get food. Another reason is that is showed the turtle being the slowest but most careful animal finally being able to remember the name of the tree. The other animals were to fast and clumsy to remember the name. This story goes along with the phrase, “slow and steady wins the race”. The characters in this book show each animals quality. They show the zebra being fast, the monkey being very talkative, the elephant stomping along, and the tortoise being slow. The illustrations in this story are very colorful and show a lot of emotion. It showed the lion getting more frustrated as each animal comes back again asking about the name of the tree. The language of the story was descriptive at times. An example of the language being descriptive is, “So tiny Tortoise crept over the hot dry earth one slow footstep at a time”. The author described all of the animals in great detail. The big idea of this story is to show teamwork. Even if one animal got the name of the tree incorrect the other animals did not get mad. Another animal would volunteer and go ask the lion again. With teamwork, they eventually got the name right and everyone shared the mango-melon-pomegranate tree.… (més)