Rehema's Journey: A Visit in Tanzania

Nine-year-old Rehema, the heroine of this full-color photo-essay, leaves her home high up in the Pare Mountains of eastern Tanzania for the first time ever when her father takes her to Arusha City and the world-famous game preserve at Ngorongoro Crater. Rehema is fascinated by Arusha's streets; Western readers will be equally fascinated by Rehema's family farm, where maize, bananas and beans grow. The visit to the Crater includes sightings of exotic wildebeests, cheetahs, a black rhinoceros, but most novel of all are the introductions to other tribes. A Waarusha girl gathers firewood, just like Rehema, but she lives in a round house with a thatched roof; a boy has painted his face white as part of a coming-of-age ceremony. The Maasai warriors rub red ochre (``a mineral from the earth mixed with animal fat'') into their hair, and wear jewelry; their houses are made of sticks and grass, and are covered with cow dung. Similarly informative and colorful details, smoothly woven into the text, highlight every page of a book that amply responds to the demand for engaging multicultural nonfiction. Ages 5-9. (Nov.)