An Unlikely Friendship Sparks Creation of Two Books
by Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 1/26/2006
A baby hippo and an aged giant tortoise are surely unlikely companions, yet over the past year, at an animal sanctuary in Kenya, the two have become inseparable. The story of their friendship begins in the aftermath of December 2004's devastating tsunami, which hit the coast of Kenya. When the water receded, a young hippo was discovered stranded alone on a coral reef, having been separated from his mother and the rest of their pod. Since the terrified animal—named Owen after one of the people who helped rescue him—was too young to survive on his own and not likely to be welcomed into another pod, he was transported to Haller Park, where he immediately gravitated toward Mzee, a 130-year-old Aldabra tortoise whose name means "wise old man" in Swahili. After initially trying to crawl away from Owen, who crouched behind Mzee in much the same way that baby hippos hide behind their mothers for protection, the old fellow began to warm to his new fan. The two now spend their days swimming, eating and snuggling together.
It is certainly a tale worth telling, and two spring picture books do just that. in distinctly different styles. Due in March from Scholastic Press is Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship, which relays the events in a narrative by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff and Dr. Paula Kahumbu and through photographs by Peter Greste. And in April, Harcourt will publish Jeanette Winter's Mama, a nearly wordless tale chronicling Owen's ordeal through acrylic paintings.
A Father-Daughter Project
Manhattan residents Isabella Hatkoff (age six at the time) and her father Craig first learned of this duo's friendship when they spotted their photo, snapped by Greste, in the New York Post on New Year's Day last year. "It immediately caught Isabella's attention," recalls Hatkoff, who wrote two earlier books with his older daughter, Juliana (including the 9/11-themed Ladder 35, Engine 40). "It was now Isabella's turn to do a book with her father and she and I had been looking for a subject for the two of us to write about," he explains. "When she saw the picture of these animals, she said, 'Daddy, can we write our book about Owen and Mzee?' I knew right away this would be the one."
Hatkoff and Isabella (whose drawings of the two animal friends adorn the book's endpapers) conducted the bulk of their research on the Internet and established e-mail communication with Dr. Kahumba, the general manager of Haller Park who had helped Owen settle into his new home. When the Hatkoffs and Kahumba decided to tell Owen's story together, the three began a lengthy e-mail correspondence. In Hatkoff's words, he and his daughter "anxiously awaited every e-mail. It was really quite thrilling."
Though Isabella did not actually write the book's text, her father emphasizes her pivotal role in shaping the book: "Her passion created both the impetus and the imperative. The story was told from her point of view and certainly reflects her sensibility. It was a way for her to express her concern and compassion for the children orphaned by the tsunami. We worked closely with the New York University Child Study Center and the doctors there who specialize in traumatic stress, separation and anxiety. Isabella was comforted that our retelling this amazing story could help other children."
Hatkoff was thrilled to discover that Greste, a Kenya-based photo-journalist and broadcaster for the BBC, had documented Owen's rescue and resettlement in many striking photographs. "It was an incredible experience creating something from nothing other than a picture in the newspaper," Hatkoff comments. "We wove the story together almost like a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, as we got more and more information from our research and from Paula and her associates. It was a collaboration in the truest sense, even though we were thousands of miles apart. It was a profoundly moving moment when Isabella and I first met Paula and Peter face to face after months of collaborating."
The original version of Owen & Mzee was launched as an e-book on WNBC's Web site last May in conjunction with the Tribeca Film Festival, of which Craig Hatkoff is co-founder. Lauren Thompson, senior editor at Scholastic Press, explains that at the festival, Hatkoff told Billy DiMichele, Scholastic's director of corporate productions, about the e-book he had produced. "Billy brought the idea to Scholastic's editorial staff, who loved the idea for a photographic picture book," she says. "I was asked to shepherd the project from e-book to hardcover, and I was excited to take it on."
Like Hatkoff, Thompson reports that the collaboration worked remarkably well: "Despite the fact that one of the authors and the photographer lived many time zones away from New York, it all went quite smoothly. I worked with Craig to reshape the text to be more appropriate for a fully illustrated picture book, then sent drafts and layouts to Paula in Kenya via e-mail. She responded as quickly as she could with her notes, even though e-mail service in Kenya can be frustratingly spotty."
In this digital age, even the process of procuring photographs from a far-off continent was relatively simple, she notes. "Peter sent us a disk full of photos, and we had our choice of many images of Owen and Mzee and other participants. Other photos were sent via e-mail. We were working on a very tight schedule. The project had to pull together quickly, and so it did, thanks to everyone's hard work."
Mama and Baby
"Mama" and "Baby" are the only words that appear in Jeanette Winter's retelling of Owen's saga, and punctuation and font size—as well as the accompanying pictures—reveal the emotion underscoring each utterance. Initially confident and content alongside his mother, Owen calls out her name with growing alarm as the tsunami strikes and the two become separated. The first time he says "Mama" to the old tortoise, the word is accompanied by a question mark, which is soon replaced by exclamation points when he recognizes Mzee as his adoptive mother.
Winter learned about these animals from a friend, who e-mailed her photos and information about Owen and Mzee. Though the author saw immediately that the story "was a ready-made book," she didn't know right away that she would create a wordless book. "But as I thought about the story," she notes, "I didn't hear voices or see words—I only heard Owen's plaintive cry for his mama. I was seeing the events from the baby hippo's point of view. So for the story that I wanted to tell, the only word really necessary was 'mama.' "
The author remarks that this tale is valuable for what it says about family, "starting with the conventional mama hippo and baby hippo and moving to the unconventional kinship of Owen and Mzee. Family doesn't have to be someone who is related to us. The hippo and tortoise are different species and they become a family, with all the love that the word implies. I think the wordlessness of the book may allow children, on their own, to discover how a new kind of family can come into being, unexpectedly, even after disaster."
Unlike the collaborative effort that produced Owen & Mzee, this was very much a solo effort. Allyn Johnston, editor-in-chief of Harcourt Children's Books, had edited several of Winter's previous books, but she did not even know Mama was in the works. "Jeanette and I work in an unusual way in that I never see anything—no drafts, no sketches—until she's completely done with a book," she says. "When we finished working on The Librarian of Basra, she said she had something new coming along that was also based on a true story but was much, much different. She asked if I would be interested in seeing it and of course I said yes. Soon Mama arrived and it moved me to tears from the very first time I read it. And it caused similar reactions both in and now out of house. Something about its simplicity takes an overwhelming idea and makes it feel safe—at least safe to ponder and maybe even learn from. It's a book that kids can really enter into with their parents and use to explore their own anxieties of separation."
Craig Hatkoff also remarks on the open-to-interpretation nature of the story of Owen and Mzee, noting that it "works on many levels, for both young and old. It is a story of hope and resilience for children in an uncertain and often cruel world. Its meaning is whatever the reader—young or old—chooses to bring to it."
And, he points out, this is a tale that is still evolving, and one with an uncertain ending. Their caretakers plan to keep Owen and Mzee together as long as they both wish to be together. When Owen seemed ready for the company of other hippos, he was moved to a different part of Haller Park, where others of his species live—including a lonely female. Mzee was moved along with him and at last report the two are still very close. "There is definitely a sequel out there for our friends Owen and Mzee," muses Hatkoff, "but we have to wait to see how the story ends. Or at least what the next chapter is."
