Tag Simona Mulazzani

The Most Famous Rhinoceros

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The Most Famous Rhinoceros
Dianne Hofmeyr and Simona Mulazzani
Otter-Barry Books

The inspiration for this moving story reimagined by Dianne Hofmeyr, was Albrecht Durer’s celebrated woodcut print of the rhinoceros sent from India to Portugal in 1515, the woodcut now being housed in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

We read how Princess Beatrix and her sister receive a one-horned animal as a gift from the Sultan of Gujarat, a creature Beatrix hopes will be a unicorn. However she’s disappointed to see standing on the sea shore straight off the ship, a very large bulky beast with a small stubby horn on the tip of its nose. Genda, is what she names the gift. Her father informs her it is a rhinoceros and mounting his stallion, he leads the animal, along with a host of other creatures, the queen and her entourage through the crowds to the palace.

Beatrix has already formed a bond with the rhino and is horrified to hear the following day, the king announcing a fight between the rhino and an elephant to settle a squabble between her two brothers.
From then on she sleeps alongside Genda’s enclosure every night leading up to the combat, a matter she doesn’t tell her new friend about.

However, come the day of the contest, the two animals face one another but no fight ensues, no matter how much enticement the creatures receive.

What will be the fate of Genda? Her brother João demands he be sent away but Beatrix begs that the rhino is returned to India and given his freedom. Not long after a ship sets sail with Genda on board and Beatrix bids her friend a fond farewell but …

Animal lovers horrified at the treatment of creatures such as Genda in this story, sent over vast distances in return for favours from their recipients, will applaud Beatrix’s caring attitude and desire to get this gift sent back from whence he came. Simona Mulazzani’s richly ornate illustrations capture beautifully the period in which the events are set, making the telling even more poignant. They show the contrasting natural beauty of the rhino with the elaborate finery of the human characters and the adornments placed upon Genda for the parade and the fight.

Tree of Wonder

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Tree of Wonder
Kate Messner and Simona Mulazzani
Chronicle Books
I loved the author’s Up in the Garden, Down in the Dirt. Now for her latest narrative information book she takes readers to a more exotic habitat, the tropical rainforest  and in particular one Almendro tree.
This tree, which we are told, is able to produce over a 1,000,000 flowers when it blooms, is in fact the centre of an ecosystem of its own with over 1,000 different living things depending on it.  Among those creatures that rely upon it for shelter and/or food are brightly coloured birds – Great Green Macaws and Keel-Billed Toucans,

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both of which feast on the ripe fruits, and Howler Monkeys (they help disperse the seeds of the fruits. Then there are the nocturnal fruit bats that also help in seed dispersal as do the Agoutis, which snuffle around the tree’s base gorging on the fallen fruits. The Blue Morpho butterflies sip the juice of the rotting fruits, roosting in groups to deter predators. For further protection, they flash their brightly coloured wings …

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then fold them up with the brown undersides against the trunk, the spots thereon giving their wing undersides a hawk- or owl-like resemblance.
Among the residents of the Almendro are tadpoles of Poison Dart frogs carried by their parents for safety into the tree where there are small pools of water; and spiders, and leafcutter ants.
Maths is also embedded within this fascinating book. The number doubles as the page is turned and a new species is featured: thus we are shown for instance 4 toucans, 8 Howler Monkeys,

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16 Fruit Bats and so on until we reach 1,024 – that’s the number of Leafcutter ants symbolically represented. And if readers want more maths, then there are, at the end, ten problems, some more challenging than others, just waiting to be solved.
Simona Mulazzani’s detailed scenes of the rainforest fauna and flora are beautiful. Every turn of the page offers a new and glorious painting to linger over.
Engagingly written and superbly illustrated, this book has much to offer primary schools using a topic-based approach to the curriculum. (I came upon several classes using the tropical rainforest as part of their investigative studies recently.)

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