Water Hole Waiting by Jane
Kurtz and Christopher Kurtz. Illustrated by Lee Christiansen. (2002)
Preschool Up. unp (32 pages.) Greenwillow/
HarperCollins. ISBN:
0-06-029851-0. $15.89 |
Water Hole Waiting
by Jane Kurtz and Christopher Kurtz
Illustrated by Lee Christiansen
From the bookflap:
"It's a hot day
on the savanna. The sun sizzles, bristles, and bakes. A young monkey
wants to drink at the water hole. But wait! Blocking the way
are irritable hippos, sharp-hoofed zebras, a toothy lion, huge
elephants, and a lurking crocodile. Will Monkey every get to taste cool
water? Why is waiting so hard?"
Annotation from the publisher:
"Waiting is hard.
And if you are a small vervet monkey with a big thirst, it's even
harder. But wait you must, because snap! go Crocodile's jaws; slip,
slap go Lion's powerful paws; thrum, thrum go the rumbling
elephants...Water holes on the African savanna are popular places. Will
Monkey and his family ever get to drink? Take this unforgettable (and
noisy!) armchair safari and find out! It's the perfect book for animal
lovers, and Lee Christiansen's lush and expressive pastel portraits of
the animals take you right to the water hole. Also includes an
informative authors' note on the facts behind the fiction.
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About the Authors: Jane Kurtz and Christopher Kurtz previously collaborated on Only a Pigeon.
Jane Kurtz lives in Lawrence, Kansas and Christopher Kurtz lives in Portland, OR.
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Honors/Reviews:
Classroom Connections
Read the book's text (before sharing Lee
Christiansen's illustrations) and ask students to choose a scene they
would like to illustrate. Compare the children's illustrations to the
images created by the illustrator.
For some background information concerning the writing of Water Hole Waiting
More about water holes.
When Jane's and Chris's editor at Greenwillow decided to publish Water Hole Waiting
she also asked some questions about the monkey in the story. Jane and
Chris set out to research the type of monkey that would have been in
the Savannah. Read about Jane's and Chris's monkey research.
More research links --
this time about the Fever Trees. At one point, when Jane read about
vervet monkeys living in "fever trees." The phrase thrilled her because
it reminded her of one of her favorite childhood stories, "The
Elephant's Child" by Rudyard Kipling. In that story, Kipling wrote
about the Great Limpopo River all set about with fever trees.
To learn more about some of the animals that come to the waterhole read: African Animals
by Caroline Arnold (Morrow, 1997). Arnold includes pictures and brief
descriptions of many of the animals that are included in Water Hole Waiting
Compare and contrast the fate of the zebra in Deborah Chandra's Who Comes?
(illustrated by Katie Lee [Sierra Club Books for Children, 1995]). In
Chandra's book, "Someone comes to the waterhole, glistening in the
evening sun, to cool his paws and wet his tongue. Who comes? Who?" It's
a lion, providing tension for each other animal that comes to drink. In
Water Hole Waiting, "Zebra is one moment quicker than death." In Chandra's book the zebra is not as quick.
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