14 Cows for America [Hardcover]

Carmen Agra Deedy (Author), Thomas Gonzalez (Illustrator), Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah (Collaborator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2009 | Age Range: 7 and up | Lexile Measure: 540L (What's this?)

In June of 2002, a very unusual ceremony begins in a far-flung village in western Kenya.
An American diplomat is surrounded by hundreds of Maasai people. A gift is about to be bestowed on the American men, women, and children, and he is there to accept it. The gift is as unsought and unexpected as it is extraordinary.

A mere nine months have passed since the September 11 attacks, and hearts are raw. Tears flow freely from American and Maasai as these legendary warriors offer their gift to a grieving people half a world away.

Word of the gift will travel news wires around the globe. Many will be profoundly touched, but for Americans, this selfless gesture will have deeper meaning still. For a heartsick nation, the gift of fourteen cows emerges from the choking dust and darkness as a soft light of hope_and friendship.

Master storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy hits all the right notes in this elegant story of generosity that crosses boundaries, nations, and cultures. An afterword by Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah_the Maasai warrior at the center of the story_provides additional information about his tribe and their generous actions. Thomas Gonzalez_s stunning paintings, which are saturated with rich hues of oranges and browns, and blues and greens, capture the modest nobility of the Maasai people and the distinctive landscape of the African plain.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 2–5—Kimeli Naiyomah returned home to his Maasai village from New York City with news of 9/11 terrorist attacks. His story prompted the villagers to give a heartfelt gift to help America heal. Deedy and Gonzalez bring Naiyomah's story to life with pithy prose and vibrant illustrations. Each block of text consists of a few short, elegant sentences: "A child asks if he has brought any stories. Kimeli nods. He has brought with him one story. It has burned a hole in his heart." The suspenseful pace is especially striking when surrounded by Gonzalez's exquisite colored pencil and pastel illustrations. The colors of Kenya explode off the page: rich blues, flaming oranges, fire-engine reds, and chocolate browns. Full-page spreads depict the Maasai people and their land so realistically as to be nearly lifelike. Gonzalez manages to break the fourth wall and draw readers in as real-time observers. The book's only flaw is the less-than-concrete ending: "…there is no nation so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort" is an important message, but not a particularly satisfying one for children. Fortunately, their questions will be answered by Naiyomah's endnote, and it provides a fitting conclusion to this breathtaking chronicle.—Rebecca Dash, New York Public Library
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Review

"...a lovely picture book...beautifully evocative..." ?The New York Times

"...moving and dramatically illustrated..." ?The Wall Street Journal

"Rarely do books for children address the bridging of cultural difference on a grand scale." ?Newsday

"An extraordinary true story of generosity, compassion and hope, 14 Cows for America is rich on multiple levels for young and old alike." ?Books to Borrow, Books to Buy

"I dare you to read this special picture book without getting teary every time." ?Library Media Connection, * STARRED REVIEW *

"A moving tale of compassion and generosity." ?Publishers Weekly

"...elegant sentences...The suspenseful pace is especially striking when surrounded by Gonzalez's exquisite colored pencil and pastel illustrations. The colors of Kenya explode off the page..." ?School Library Journal, * STARRED REVIEW *

"...gentle yet piercing present-tense prose...A stirring, heartwarming tale that made headlines when it happened-and is now, thankfully, preserved on the page for children." ?Kirkus Reviews

"...the words and the glowing mixed-media illustrations show empathy and connections across communities..." ?Booklist

"...an unforgettable book." ?Young Adult (& Kids) Book Central

"...it could generate some excellent discussion in classrooms and families." ?The Huffington Post

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 7 and up
  
• Hardcover: 36 pages
• Publisher: Peachtree Publishers; 1 edition (August 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561454907
• ISBN-13: 978-1561454907
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 11.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Children's Books > Travel & Cultures > Explore the World > Africa

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of its kind September 6, 2009

By E. R. Bird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

As with any tragedy, in the years following the wake of September 11th a spate of books came out discussing, dissecting, and generally trying to make sense of what occurred. In this the children's literary world and the adult literary world were very much alike. Picture books in particular took a great deal of interest in making the events palatable to young impressionable minds. The results were mixed. The general consensus was to write titles that focused on the human moments that surrounded the tragedy. That adorable little fireboat that helped put out the blazes in Maira Kalman's almost too cute Fireboat. The women who could not deliver their roses, and so created an impromptu memorial in Jeannette Winter's September Roses. Best of these was Mordecai Gerstein's The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, the tragedy was merely tangential to the real story. These books all came out within a few years of one another and then nothing. It was as if people didn't feel inclined or capable of coming up with something new. Then comes 14 Cows for America. By rights, this book should not work. That it succeeds as magnificently as it does is a credit to each one of its three creators.

One day a young man named Kimeli returns to the village where he grew up. Kimeli is Maasai and he has been studying in New York to become a doctor. However, the events of September 11th are still with him, and later he tells his people the story of that horror of that particular day. Kimeli tells the elders that he will offer his cow to the people of America.... The elders agree, but invite a diplomat from the United States Embassy in Nairobi to visit the village. When the diplomat comes he is greeted with a full ceremony and is presented with not one, but fourteen cows. A Note from Kimeli himself at the end explains how all this came to be, and says that "These sacred, healing cows can never be slaughtered," and will be kept under Maasai care in Kenya.

Carmen Agra Deedy has done a remarkable job with the text. Now, I will admit that I walked into this book skeptical, because I was not the world's biggest fan of her The Yellow Star. That was a book that took a myth and turned it into a story that, to those not reading closely, could have been interpreted as fact. To take this true story and give it the right tone and temper . . . well, to be perfectly frank I wasn't sure what to expect. As it turned out, I needn't have worried. This isn't a book where an author heard a story, thought it would make a great picture book, and then wrote the tale entirely on her own with minimal input from the people directly involved. Deedy collaborated directly with the book's protagonist, Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah to give this story its factual background. In the Spring of 2002 Deedy picked up her copy of The New York Times and read this story about the Maasai. Over the years she continued to collect information and eventually she got in touch with Naiyomah. They emailed back and forth and result is the book we have today.

The remarkable thing about the storytelling is that the little human facts make it interesting, but without ever sounding condescending. It would be all too easy to turn this into a story where the Maasai come off looking like magical saintly people who do this grand deed because they are not of this world. Deedy strives instead to make them infinitely human and relatable. To do this, she first needs to make it perfectly clear what the cow represents to them, so the term "the cow is life" is invoked. Kimeli is the detail that sets the book apart, of course. He is the tie that binds. Without him, this would be like any other story told about an insular group by an outsider. With Kimeli you are inside the story with the Maasai, and you are given a deeper understanding of a symbolic gesture. Deedy grounds her tale in the real world, then finds just the right words. It takes a real author to know how to finish a tale of this sort perfectly, but Deedy's last sentence takes the cake. "Because there is no nation so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort."

Like Deedy, Gonzalez is also originally from Cuba, a fact that I found particularly interesting. In her Author blurb, Deedy says of herself "she came to the United States as a refugee and like most immigrants sees the world from multiple perspectives." Gonzalez does not discuss his perspective in his blurb, but it's clear that with this book he has debuted with something remarkably strong. His background is in graphic design and art direction and as a Georgia resident it's just remarkably lucky that he happened to be near the Atlanta-based Peachtree publisher. Now he has a picture book to his name that is far and away one of the most beautiful out there. The illustrations you find here are created in pastel, colored pencil, and airbrush. The result are these rich, full colors that transition beautifully between the early morning gloom of a jeep headed to a village on one page and the full-throttle reds and vibrant colors of a ritual on the next.

The artist also eschews stereotype and the easy way out. His images have the feel of a documentary, as well as a work of art. Like Deedy, Gonzalez acknowledges that these are warriors we're talking about. In one two-page spread you see just the heads of two men, one of them with their face in shadow, just the eyes looking steadily at the reader. These aren't people you mess with but, as the text says, "They are fierce when provoked, but easily moved to kindness when they hear of suffering or injustice."

Gonzalez is at his cleverest when he must invoke the feel of September 11th without actually showing it. This is something picture books about 9/11 have to do on a regular basis, but none of the books about that day have been quite so clever about presenting the incident visually. When Kimeli tells his story the reader is on the same level as the village children, looking up. Most of the two-page spread consists of the sky above with Kimeli lifting his arms in the telling of his tale. Above him, the sky is gray with streaks of red and orange. For anyone familiar with the images of September 11th, such colors are instantly recognizable. Gonzalez has taken a day, reduced it to color alone, and then placed it harmlessly in an African sky where it illustrates a terrible tale. It is the smartest illustration choice I have seen in a very long time. For that image alone, the book should win some awards. Of course, there is one shot of the towers burning in the eyes of a Maasai child at the end of the book, but that picture is far less powerful than the preceding image and, in fact, feels a bit superfluous in comparison.

I did hear one criticism of this book that I thought was fairly on point. Non-fiction books for kids walk a tricky line between telling their stories for their child audiences and telling stories for the adults who are actually buying these books in the first place. To bridge this gap, many times an author will tell their story for the kids at the start, then follow up their story in the Afterword or Author's Note at the end for the adults. This doesn't have to happen, of course. In The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Caldecott Honor Book) by Peter Sis, for example, the author cleverly created two narratives, one old and one young, so that kids of different ages and reading levels could all get something out of the material. The argument has been made that in the case of 14 Cows for America there are facts mentioned in the "Note from Kimeli Naiyomah" that should really have been in the text. Facts like what eventually happened to the cows (they are in Kenya "under the guidance of the revered elder Mzee Ole-Yiampoi"), which a lot of kids will be wondering when they finish this book. The kids will probably believe that when the Maasai "give" their cows to America they are physically sending the cows there, just as the King of Siam meant to sent President Lincoln elephants for the Civil War. The fact that this giving is a symbolic gesture could be better explained. And I agree that the cows' fate would have been nice to mention in the text, but I don't think the choice of including it at the end hurts the book too badly. I've read far too many non-fiction picture books where there ISN'T an Afterword or Author's Note of any sort, so at least this one is present. Should this information have been in the story? Sure. But if kids ask "What happened to the cows?" parents at least will be able to the Note and read their children what it says at the back. The option is there.

If I were to pair this book with any other, I think I might go so far as to suggest that people read 14 Cows for America alongside Lynn Barasch's rather fascinating First Come the Zebra. While Deedy's book examines the Maasai from within their own community, showing how they work with one another, Barasch's book then displays them alongside the Kikuyu and offers hope in the face of prejudice. Zebra shows that not everything is easy for the Maasai. Cows shows their concern and care for the rest of the world in spite of this.

On paper, this book shouldn't work. There are so many elements that could go horribly wrong. The story could be too treacly. The pictures too self-serving or patronizing. The writing too pandering. I'm the first person to view a book of this sort with a skeptical, even over-critical eye, but what I find here is a remarkable melding of three different people, coming together to tell a single true story. Fourteen Cows ends with the sentence, "The Maasai wish is that every time Americans hear this simple story of fourteen cows, they will find a measure of comfort and peace." With this book, that is now possible. Read more ›

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant and poetic August 12, 2009

By P. Copeland

Format:Hardcover

This incredible story relates the response of the a Maasai tribe to the September 11th tragedy. When one of their members, who is studying in the US, relates the events of 9/11, the tribe responds with compassion. The illustrations and the poetic language work together to create an amazingly beautiful book. I highly recommend it!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars 14 Cows for America October 12, 2009

By Jane F. Erickson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

As a former teacher, I think this would be a wonderful book to use early in the school year, around 9/11, for 3rd-12th grades. It's a wonderful way to help students look at an event through the eyes of other people. It is also a subtle, but effective, way to dispell stereotypes that some may have about people living in Africa - the main character is going to college at Stanford to prepare for medical school!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartrending and powerful November 10, 2009

By L. Swain

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

As an elementary teacher, I spend most of my Barnes and Noble visits in the children's book section of the store. On my last visit I saw this title and grabbed it off the shelf to flip through. I was embarrassed because I began to weep in the middle of the bookstore as I read the story. I would flip a page, pause to collect myself, and then tear up again as I resumed my reading. What a powerful story, and how empowering for the Masai. The best part is that there is no heavy-handed metaphor, or blatant trumpeting of a moral - the storytellers let the story tell itself. It is exquisite, and a great read aloud for children as young as first grade.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book October 4, 2009

By D. Kroll

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a beautifully illustrated, wonderful book based on a true story. Author Carmen Deedy is a delightful person. I had the opportunity to hear her speak, and her account of the writing of this book is very moving. I also had the opportunity to take a group of my high school students to hear Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah whose story is the subject of the book. My students were in awe! Although this is a children's book, it truly is a book for all ages.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfectly enhanced throughout with the full-page color artwork of Thomas Gonzalez August 21, 2009

By Midwest Book Review

Format:Hardcover

"14 Cows For America" is a beautifully illustrated children's picture book for young readers ages 6 to 10 and based upon a true story. On September 11, 2001, whil visiting the United nations headquarters in New York on that fateful day, Maasai tribesman and Stanford University student Kimeli Naiyomah was deeply affected by the events that cost the lives of so many Americans. Kimeli went back to his home in a Western Kenya village so remote that his tribe had not heard of the attack on America until he told them. The village reacted to Kimeli's sorrow and decided to do something for America. The Maasai people, being nomadic cattle herders, determined to gift as a gift to America fourteen of their best cattle because, to the tribe, the cow equals life. With the help of Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, Carmen Agra Deedy's retelling of this story and its humanitarian message is so perfectly enhanced throughout with the full-page color artwork of Thomas Gonzalez, makes "14 Cows For America" a truly wonderful and enthusiastically recommended addition to school and community library picture book collections for children.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sure to be a classic August 20, 2011

By AKM

Format:Hardcover

I read this story to my fifth grade students every September 11th. It offers a different perspective than most children's books about 9/11. The Massai tribe hears of the horrors of 9/11 and offer a gift to America. What it does teach is that all of humanity is one, no matter where we live when such a horrific tragedy occurs, we ALL grieve together and we all must heal together. This is a touching story with beautiful soft illustrations that fit perfectly with the simple and eloquent words of the author. The message: "...there is no nation so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort". A touching, must read.