Desert Elephants (review)

Elephants aren't usually associated with deserts, but Cowcher offers a chronicle of the little-known desert elephants of Mali, who live just south of the Sahara and who migrate over a 300-mile route to find water when the dry season hits. The book focuses not only on the elephants but also on the local peoples, the Dogon, Fulani, and Tuareg, who have lived alongside the elephants for centuries. The result is an impressionistic picture of a tough and challenging ecosystem whose challenges are shared by human and elephant ("Talla, like the elephants, got water from the small lake among the trees"), and where old traditions of coexistence blend effectively with modern details such as radio broadcasts and pro-conservation wall signage. Cowcher's watercolors focus more on broad, painterly fields of color than on modeling, resulting in occasionally stiff draftsmanship and unusually smooth elephants but generally offering arresting landscapes that radiate the heat of the Sahel. The human scenes are actually more vivid than the elephantine, energized by the high-voltage patterns of people's clothes. While some audience members will want to know more about this little-documented elephant population, this is a vibrant quick introduction to the human and animal milieu of the Sahel, and the focus on coexistence gives it a useful environmental implication and helps introduce the idea to kids a few years away from the Scientists in the Field series. The book closes with a factual Q&A about both elephants and people and offers pointers to a couple of informative websites; a map of the region appears on the endpapers.