Mojave

This is a gorgeous book. Minor's art is gritty like the sand of the desert the book is based on, and Siebert speaks as though the desert as an entity is a poet writing about jack rabbits, ravens, burros, mustangs, rocks, and so on. It's a great, cohesive theme, and the words and illustrations fit together.

I was surprised at the low rating that this book has previously received. The illustrations by Wendell Minor are evocative of the thousands of miles of landscape of southern California, southern Nevada and Utah and Arizona that make up the Mojave desert. The colors are muted with deep browns, dark shadows and lighter moments of the gentle colors of creatures and wild flowers of this region. The illustrations perfectly match the soft tone of the poem, written as a narrative by the Mojave Desert by the talented Diane Siebert.

The poem is rich, but I do not believe it is overly complicated with its rhyming couplets. My favorite lines are a good example of this, "While tossed and blown in great stampedes/Are stumbling, bumbling show more tumbleweeds." The tone is light like the colors of the pictures while at the same time building lovely images through the author's use of figurative language:

And as the desert seasons change,
The hands of Nature rearrange
My timeworn face with new designs
Of colors, shadows, shapes, and lines.

This is one of those books that I had a hard time defining as non-fiction. I am still not sure that you could/should propose this as non-fiction in the classroom because of the personification of the desert. it is the narrator. It would be a shame though not to bring out this kind of book when teaching children (k-3) about geography or simple geographical features as there is a great deal of information about what makes up a desert and who lives in one. show less

This book about the Mojave Desert in California has beautiful illustrations by Wendell Minor. "Mojave" is written as a poem and each page should be read slowly. Some fourth graders will be challenged by the language that author Diane Siebert chose, but others will probably appreciate it.