Once Upon a Camel (w/bonus activities)

Now that my kids are at the age that they have longer attention spans (they are seven and nine at the time of this writing), I am regularly on the hunt for books that I can read aloud to them, ones that we can all enjoy getting wrapped up in together. Once Upon a Camel was one of those books for us. It has animals, adventure, and a storyline with writing so captivating that we didn't want to put it down. In fact, we enjoyed this book so much that, not only have we borrowed it from our public library twice now, but I also purchased our own copy so that my kiddos can sit and read it on their own whenever they like.

With the title of "Once Upon a...", you might think that this novel will start in the same manner as a classic fairy tale, but that is not so! Instead, the reader is instantly tossed into the story as a wild, sand-laden wall of wind is tossing everything about in its path. This haboob, as the wind is called, is threatening the lives of everything in its path, including that of the main characters - Zada (a kind-hearted, aging camel) and Pard, Perlita, Wims and Beulah (a family of American Kestrels, with the latter two being only chicks.) By the end of the fourth chapter, the winds of the haboob have blown Pard and Perlita away in its gusts, leaving Zada to rescue their chicks by taking them to a safe place, with the plan of meeting up again once the danger had passed. (Spoiler alert: Both parents survive and are reunited with their chicks. Phew! A fairy tale ending at least.) Perched in the tuft on Zada's head, the kestrel siblings listen to Zada tell them stories of her childhood and growing up years to keep them calm on their journey. We travel with them between Turkey and the U.S. as this novel takes us from present to past at the turn of a chapter.

Speaking of chapters, there are seventy of them in this book, and they range in length from one to seven pages. It was almost always possible to let my children have that "one more chapter" at bedtime because the chapters are so short. The shorter chapters also make this a brilliant readaloud choice as the reading time can be easily adjusted for different attention spans without feeling like you are leaving off in the middle of a thought. Another plus for the younger crowd is that there are a number of greyscale illustrations throughout the book, some small ones but also some full page spreads. These help children transition from solely reading picture books to enjoying readalouds, too.

As a homeschooling Mom, Once Upon a Camel came into our lives at the perfect time for our science lessons. We has just finished reading a glossary of geographical features (pictured at right) for my son's science when I started pre-reading Once Upon a Camel. I came upon multiple geographical features just a few chapters into this book, with a large number of chapters taking place in an escarpment of all places, one of the new features we had just learned about! So I made a bookmark out of cardstock and took a pen with me as we read, asking the kids to tell me each time they heard me read out a new geographical feature. We must have had about three dozen of them on our bookmark by the time we finished hearing Zada's story. It was such fun review of what we has just learned.

And then I took that geography lesson just a little bit further. With our cardstock bookmark as a reference, I gave my children the task of building out some of the scenes of Once Upon a Camel in Lego, paying special attention to the geographical features mentioned. They loved it! And they even brought out our plastic toy camel (although the wrong species) and a toy cougar to reenact different parts from the book. (Can you spot him peeking out of the grey escarpment?)

I wholeheartedly recommend this chapter book as either a family readaloud or for your child's personal reading time. And if you do read it, I hope you love the surprise ending as much as we did.

Once Upon a Camel by Kathi Appelt

Published in 2021