Run for Your Life!: Predators and Prey on the African Savanna

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Run for Your Life!: Predators and Prey on the African Savanna

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Overview

A day on the African savanna is like a game of hide-and-seek with deadly consequences. Fierce, predatory animals chase down weaker creatures for food, while their targets scatter to avoid ending up as lunch. We see animals of all sizes on their quest for a meal, leading up to a climactic face-off with some hungry lions: Run for your life! Backmatter includes average sprint speeds for the animals mentioned in the book.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823435555
Publisher:	Holiday House, Inc.
Publication date:	01/30/2016
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 11.20(h) x 0.32(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Lola M. Schaefer has written more than 250 books for children. After teaching in elementary school classrooms for eighteen years, she is now a national writing and educational consultant. She lives in Georgia.

Paul Meisel has written and illustrated many books for children. His first I Like to Read® book, See Me Run, was a Theodor Seuss Geisel Award Honor Book. He lives in Connecticut.

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Editorial Reviews

11/09/2015
The creators of Swamp Chomp (2014) focus on animals indigenous to another ecosystem while offering a similar mix of staccato text and fluid art. After a hushed opening spread (“On the savanna, animals sleep”), the creatures leap to life. Schaefer deploys a wealth of fun-to-repeat verbs, which hint at the animals’ comparative speeds: “Hyenas bolt, and wildebeests gallop. Wild dogs rush, and zebras stampede.” Though unmentioned in the story itself, the predator-prey relationship is apparent (an eagle swoops at a rabbit, which hops away; an ostrich scurries from a leaping cheetah), building to an encounter with two lions, menacingly perched on a rock: “Run... for your life!” Schaefer writes as the animals scatter. Meisel punctuates the dusty savanna grasses with dollops of brightness, including the vivid oranges of monkey fur and the setting sun. Speed freaks will glom on to the final spread, which provides a brief overview of the “chase-and-flee scenes” common to the savanna and compares the animals’ average sprint speeds. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary Studio. Illustrator’s agent: Jennifer Mattson, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Life on the African savanna can be fairly quiet and peaceful at night. But when morning comes and the animals awake, they are on the run. There are all kinds of animals—from elephants and snakes to jackals and giraffes—and they are all searching for food. Nothing can stop them, until they meet the lions. Then it’s a different story. Except for the introduction explaining why the animals are on the move and a chart at the back telling how fast the animals can go, the text is minimal and mostly describes the kind of movements the animals make (e.g., elephants lumber). The real point of the book is the illustrations. Beyond getting an idea of what the animals look like, youngsters will want to examine the animals’ eyes. While readers are watching them, what are they watching? Children will also want to look closely at the tall grasses to see what kind of head might be peaking out or what animal might be lurking in the distance. But not to worry: none of these animals are frightening, and even the snake looks happy. As a first book of animals, this does a good job engaging readers with large, colorful illustrations of some of the world’s most interesting inhabitants. Reviewer: Leona Illig; Ages 4 to 8.

Children's Literature - Leona Illig

02/01/2016
K-Gr 2—It is night on the African savanna, and all the animals are sleeping peacefully, preparing for another day of hunting or being hunted. As the day progresses, a wide variety of beasts hop, slither, dash, scurry, swoop, and flee across the pages to the right. And then, as evening begins to descend, all the animals encounter the ultimate of African predators, the fearsome lions, and it is a mad dash to the left across the pages as they run for their lives. Through simple sentence structure, Schaefer highlights the action, with the verbs taking center stage and providing lots of opportunity for fun, interactive vocabulary lessons ("Jackals pounce, and giraffes lope. Hyenas bolt, and wildebeests gallop."). The watercolor and acrylic artwork is full of movement and humor, as creatures leap across the page or hide in the background, their eyes always on their enemy. A brief introduction sets the stage, and some notes at the end share sprint speeds of all the animals depicted. VERDICT A great resource for classrooms and libraries that serve the youngest elementary students.—Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA

School Library Journal

2015-12-08
Following Swamp Chomp (2014), Schaefer and Meisel explore animals in motion on the African savanna. Schaefer begins by sketching the relationship between predators and their prey. "They chase their prey across the plains, sometimes catching their next meal, sometimes not. It's a real-life game of hide-and-seek." After a nighttime scene of sleeping prey animals eyed by a lioness, the action shifts to day, as "leopards spring, / and impalas bound. // Eagles swoop, / and hares hop. // Crocodiles lunge, / and hippos trot." At times, the staccato couplets stray from their predator-prey focus: "Snakes slither, / and elephants lumber." The narrative shifts again, to the animals' collective movement: "Across the savanna, / they scamper and skitter, / past termites / and aardvarks, / near watering holes / and rhinos." The text oversimplifies the savanna's complex food chain, making no attempt to further distinguish the depicted animals as omnivores, herbivores, scavengers, or decomposers. Meisel's mixed-media pictures clearly capture distinguishing features of the animals amid grasslands dotted with acacia trees. However, there's visual elision, too, as several spreads—including a climactic encounter with lions and a final slumber scene—depict the animals as a cohesive group, with just one or two individuals per species. A few facts, and a list of the 24 mentioned animals with their average sprint speeds, are appended without references. More whimsy than fact here—but by that measure, an agreeable-enough romp. (Picture book. 3-6)

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