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. ( )

An appealing, vibrantly illustrated version of a lesser known African folktale. ( )

I loved this new African tale. The children love how silly the animals are for not remembering the name of the Bojabi tree - the lion has clearly stated the name! Good old tortoise saves his friends from hunger by going slow and repeating the word. I would use this book to teach the lesson of the story - patience and practice. ( )

Summary: In this story, four friends (Monkey, Tortoise, Elephant, and Zebra) are traveling through the desert, trying to find food. One day they came across a tree that was covered in fruit. However, Python was guarding the tree and wouldn't let the friends eat from it until they told him the name of the tree. The friends decided to individually go to the King of the Jungle to find out the name of the tree. Zebra went first, followed by Monkey, and then Elephant. All three of them were told the name of the tree was Bojabi, but as they made their return to the tree, they each forgot the name. Tortoise went last and although the friends thought it would take him forever to reach the tree and return, he was the only one to successfully remember the name of the tree. The four friends were then allowed to each from the tree as Python left.

Review: The main idea of this story is to let students know not to doubt the abilities of others. As seen in this story, all three of the Tortoise's friends thought he would be too slow and forget the name of the tree before he came back. However, Tortoise proves all of his friends wrong since he was the only one who remembered the Bojabi trees name. Thus, his friends realized they should not have doubted his abilities in the first place. This is a great way to teach students that even though others may be faster than some or think they are better, this is not necessarily true. I really liked the story behind this book and thought it would be a great way to teach students about what it's like to believe in others and to not doubt anyone elses ability. ( )