Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Once Upon a Camel by Kathi Appelt (Review and Giveaway)

“Sometimes, it seems, the storyteller needs the story as much as the listeners, and after all, there was so much more to tell.”

Once Upon a Camel by Kathi Appelt is a sweet tale—set in the Chisos Mountains in West Texas in 1910—about Zada the camel protecting a couple of kestrel chicks during a huge dust storm or haboob. Zada sooths Beulah’s and Wims’s fear and sorrow at the disappearance of their parents by telling them several tales, including from her childhood in Smyrna, Turkey, with her best friend, Asiye, and Teodor, their keeper and the Pasha’s cameleer. Teodor’s job is to prepare the camels for the Pasha’s elite racing team, and Zada has many memories of that special time in her life.

The targeted audience for this delightful story is middle grade, but everyone can find pleasure in this simple yet poignant story about trust, responsibility, courage, and friendship. As an embedded narrative or story-within-a-story, Once Upon a Camel shows some similarities to Arabian Nights and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Just as in those classic tales, Zada must tell her stories to achieve a purpose. In this case, she must distract and amuse her charges while protecting them from the dust storm and the mountain lion whose lair—empty at the moment, thank goodness—they duck into to wait out the storm.

The prose is a unique combination of fairy tale, juvenile fiction, and thrilling adventure, and young readers and adult readers alike will be quickly drawn into Zada’s story and embedded stories and her smart way of keeping the kestrel chicks safe. Will the kestrel parents Pard and Perlita ever be reunited with their wee offspring? Can Zada fulfill her promise to get Beulah and Wims to safety? Will the haboob ever abate and stop its dusty, deadly destruction? Will Zada lose her patience with the birdy sibling’s bickering? How and why did Zada travel from Turkey to Texas? Diving into Once Upon a Camel will reveal all the answers and more and provide a significant level of amusement and distraction.

Once Upon a Camel is a great example of Kathi Appelt’s wide range of storytelling skills. Truly, all her books are worth exploring, no matter your age or story preference, because Kathi delivers pure entertainment, again and again. Zada and the other characters in Once Upon a Camel will certainly charm and maybe even make you ponder the timeless value of friendship, true love, memories, and promises kept.

Kathi Appelt is the author of the Newbery Honoree, National Book Award finalist, and bestselling The Underneath as well as the National Book Award Finalist The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, Maybe a Fox (with Alison McGhee), Keeper, and many picture books including Counting Crows and Mogie, the Heart of the House. She lives in College Station, Texas, with her husband and five gifted and talented cats.

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