Worlds away from Jeanette Winter's retelling, Mama0 (2006), in which the nearly wordless text and stark design offered youngsters little buffer against Owen's terrifying separation from his mother, Bauer's picture-book version closely matches its narrative and visual tones to its target audience. A rhythmic, lulling narrative smooths the barbed edges of the disaster ("The rain fell and it fell and it fell. The Sabaki River rose and it rose and it rose"), and Butler's feathery illustrations, featuring smiling, doe-eyed animals rendered in soft tones of butter, rose, and lavender, hint at the sunny outcome even during the story's troubling opening scenes. Composition choices, too, spin the trauma appropriately for the very young; for instance, even as Bauer acknowledges, post-tsunami, that Owen's mother was "lost" and Owen himself was "alone in the sea," Butler's close-up picture avoids the overwhelming, long-distance perspective of a tiny figure dwarfed by the vast ocean. Apart from a font cluttered with ornamentation, the book's large format and attractive presentation invites sharing--even with sensitive young listeners. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2006 Booklist

The story of the baby hippopotamus named Owen who adopted Mzee, a century-old tortoise, as his mother, caught the world's imagination after the tsunami of 2004. Here, veteran author Bauer makes a sentimentalized version of the tale. Owen loves to play hide-and-seek with his mama, but the tsunami washes away all he knows and all those who know him. When he sees the giant tortoise, which seems to be the same color as his mama, Owen snuggles down next to him. He follows Mzee, swims, eats and plays hide-and-seek with him. Butler's acrylics-and-colored-pencil pictures are awash in pale and shadowy or rosy and golden tones, and the pictures give the animals soft and human expressions without quite anthropomorphizing them. The story is dramatized more fully, although with almost no words, in Jeanette Winter's Mama (2006), and told with photographs and a fine narrative text in Owen & Mzee (2006), by Craig Hatkoff and his daughter Isabella. (Picture book. 5-7) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

PreS-Gr 1-The true story of the African baby hippo that was separated from his mother during the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 and then bonded with a giant tortoise is one that has endeared itself to many. This version is a bit too endearing. Bauer's symmetrical text gives the basic facts, compressing details in order to draw clear parallels between the hippo's activities with his mother and then with the tortoise. The author uses repetitive phrasing to convey the severity of the situation: "The rain fell and it fell and it fell. The Sabaki River rose and it rose and it rose." While this is a time-honored narrative device, when combined with Butler's soft-focus, anthropomorphic artwork, the effect is cloying and monotonous. The scenes, rendered in acrylic paint and colored pencils in a gray/brown/pale-lavender palette, feature animals that smile continuously, even during the storm. For strong visuals and a conceptually satisfying account, stick with the striking photographs and sensitive narrative provided in Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff, and Paula Kahumbu's Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (2006) and its sequel, Owen & Mzee: The Language of Friendship (2007, both Scholastic), reviewed in this issue.-Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A tsunami sweeps young hippo Owen out to sea, separating him from his mother. Washed ashore, he meets elderly tortoise Mzee, who becomes his mother substitute and friend. With this fictionalized account, readers are introduced to the true story of Owen and Mzee. The soft-hued acrylic and colored-pencil illustrations featuring smiling animals lean toward the cutesy (but not distractingly so). (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.