A GREAT CHRISTMAS GIFT TO REMIND US IT IS NOT THE QUANITY OF GIFTS GIVEN BUT THE INTENT TO PROVIDE A GIFT FROM WITHIN.

14 Cows for America is a beautiful story masterfully written by Carmen Deedy, and accompanied by gorgeous illustrations.

The messages all children should learn continue even beyond the story.

My grandchildren got copies. Your children and grandchildren should too!

I gave this to all of my grandchildren. I think the book works on many levels. When I read the review of the book in the NYT book review section I cried. The book has great illustrations and a wonderful true story.

14 Cows for America is a beautifully drawn and uplifting story of local villagers in a Maasai village in Kenya that were so moved by the loss suffered by Americans when the Twin Towers in NYC were destroyed that they decided to send something of great value to help us. This is a true story and a tribute to the human values we all (should) share!!

This is a fabulous book that everyone, child and adult alike should read. The art is magnificent, but best is the amazing (true!) story of a young man whose heartfelt expression of love for all people should be an inspiration to all of us.

Kimeli neared his village and was anxious to get there because he had been gone a long time. The little children ran to him "with the speed and grace of cheetahs." He smiled and gently touched the top of their heads as they slightly bowed for it was a "warrior's blessing." He was a Maasai and was grateful to be back in their fold. In history the Maasai were once known to be "feared warriors," but they now were a peaceable lot and tended cows. It was a contrast to their former way of life, but to them "the cow is life" and they were extremely important members of the tribe. They even gave them names. His mother called to him, "Aakúa. Welcome, my son."

He was studying to be a doctor and couldn't stay. Children always want to hear stories and Kimeli began to tell on that had "burned a hole in his heart." He told the story to the elders and then the rest of the tribe gathered round to hear the tale of horror he brought to them. "Building so tall they can touch the sky? Fires so hot the can melt iron?" He was telling them about the three thousand people who were lost. The Maasai are a fierce people, but are "easily moved to kindness when they hear of suffering or injustice." An elder was the first to speak and wondered what they could do. Kimeli gave up his prized cow. They began to come forward . . . the United States Embassy in Nairobi was contacted . . .

This was an extremely touching story of how human beings, who don't even know about the existence of others, can step forward and give their greatest possessions to ease their pain and loss. The artwork is sweeping and beautiful. The most intensely moving page spread just seems to stop the story when they are told of the "more than three thousand souls" that were lost. I saw an extremely serious look on the faces of two people, a look that mirrored the way many Americans felt on 9/11. A note from Kimeli Naiyomah in the back of the book tells the story of his people and how "these sacred, healing cows can never be slaughtered." This is a wonderful story of compassion and love that needs to be told.

Kimeli is a Maasai. To the nomadic, cow-herding Maasai, the cow is life. When Kimeli was growing up, his mother was too poor to own a cow, and his dream was to earn enough money to buy her a cow. He fulfilled this dream as an adult, and he bought her a cow named Enkarus. He was also taught by the grandpas and grandmas of his village that the greatest way to heal the pain in someone else's heart is to give them something that is close to your own heart. Kimeli left his mother and cow far behind when he journeyed to the United States on scholarship to study to become a doctor. He was in New York City on September 11, 2001,when the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed by terrorists.

This book is the story of Kimeli's journey back to his Maasai village to consult with the village elders about his desire to give what was closest to his heart, Enkarus, to America. He wanted the elders to bless his gift. After he amazed his people with the story of the destruction of the towers, others in his tribe also wanted to help the Americans. Fourteen cows were blessed as gifts, and the United States Embassy in Nairobi was asked to send someone to the village.

Not knowing what was planned, the embassy sent a diplomat to visit, and he was given fourteen cows for America.Through him we learned, "no nation is so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort."

The prose is economical and poetic. The full-color double-page illustrations with dramatic perspectives are exquisite. The topic is timely, but the generosity of spirit is timeless. Stellar.

As an elementary teacher, I spend most of my Barnes and Noble visits in the children's book section of the store. On my last visit I saw this title and grabbed it off the shelf to flip through. I was embarrassed because I began to weep in the middle of the bookstore as I read the story. I would flip a page, pause to collect myself, and then tear up again as I resumed my reading. What a powerful story, and how empowering for the Masai. The best part is that there is no heavy-handed metaphor, or blatant trumpeting of a moral - the storytellers let the story tell itself. It is exquisite, and a great read aloud for children as young as first grade.

This is a lovely book about the aftermath of 9/11 as told by a Maasai warrior who happened to be visiting the United Nations when the planes started hitting the World Trade Center. Kimeli goes back to his Kenya village and tells his tribe what has happened. The village elders decide to gift the U.S. with their most precious of possessions--a gift of 14 cows. Although the cows remained with the Maasai where they and their off spring are branded with a little twin towers--the gift of compassion, of love, of caring is the true message.

In 36 pages, the author has managed to convey the culture of the Maasai and relives some of the horror of that day. The illustrations are also a lovely accompaniment to the story. The 14 Cows website, ([...]) has additional information on the Maasai, the cows, and the book which will enhance the reading to your children.

As a former teacher, I think this would be a wonderful book to use early in the school year, around 9/11, for 3rd-12th grades. It's a wonderful way to help students look at an event through the eyes of other people. It is also a subtle, but effective, way to dispell stereotypes that some may have about people living in Africa - the main character is going to college at Stanford to prepare for medical school!

This is a beautifully illustrated, wonderful book based on a true story. Author Carmen Deedy is a delightful person. I had the opportunity to hear her speak, and her account of the writing of this book is very moving. I also had the opportunity to take a group of my high school students to hear Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah whose story is the subject of the book. My students were in awe! Although this is a children's book, it truly is a book for all ages.

As with any tragedy, in the years following the wake of September 11th a spate of books came out discussing, dissecting, and generally trying to make sense of what occurred. In this the children's literary world and the adult literary world were very much alike. Picture books in particular took a great deal of interest in making the events palatable to young impressionable minds. The results were mixed. The general consensus was to write titles that focused on the human moments that surrounded the tragedy. That adorable little fireboat that helped put out the blazes in Maira Kalman's almost too cute Fireboat. The women who could not deliver their roses, and so created an impromptu memorial in Jeannette Winter's September Roses. Best of these was Mordecai Gerstein's The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, the tragedy was merely tangential to the real story. These books all came out within a few years of one another and then nothing. It was as if people didn't feel inclined or capable of coming up with something new. Then comes 14 Cows for America. By rights, this book should not work. That it succeeds as magnificently as it does is a credit to each one of its three creators.

One day a young man named Kimeli returns to the village where he grew up. Kimeli is Maasai and he has been studying in New York to become a doctor. However, the events of September 11th are still with him, and later he tells his people the story of that horror of that particular day. Kimeli tells the elders that he will offer his cow to the people of America. The elders agree, but invite a diplomat from the United States Embassy in Nairobi to visit the village. When the diplomat comes he is greeted with a full ceremony and is presented with not one, but fourteen cows. A Note from Kimeli himself at the end explains how all this came to be, and says that "These sacred, healing cows can never be slaughtered," and will be kept under Maasai care in Kenya.

Carmen Agra Deedy has done a remarkable job with the text. Now, I will admit that I walked into this book skeptical, because I was not the world's biggest fan of her The Yellow Star. That was a book that took a myth and turned it into a story that, to those not reading closely, could have been interpreted as fact. To take this true story and give it the right tone and temper . . . well, to be perfectly frank I wasn't sure what to expect. As it turned out, I needn't have worried. This isn't a book where an author heard a story, thought it would make a great picture book, and then wrote the tale entirely on her own with minimal input from the people directly involved. Deedy collaborated directly with the book's protagonist, Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah to give this story its factual background. In the Spring of 2002 Deedy picked up her copy of The New York Times and read this story about the Maasai. Over the years she continued to collect information and eventually she got in touch with Naiyomah. They emailed back and forth and result is the book we have today.

The remarkable thing about the storytelling is that the little human facts make it interesting, but without ever sounding condescending. It would be all too easy to turn this into a story where the Maasai come off looking like magical saintly people who do this grand deed because they are not of this world. Deedy strives instead to make them infinitely human and relatable. To do this, she first needs to make it perfectly clear what the cow represents to them, so the term "the cow is life" is invoked. Kimeli is the detail that sets the book apart, of course. He is the tie that binds. Without him, this would be like any other story told about an insular group by an outsider. With Kimeli you are inside the story with the Maasai, and you are given a deeper understanding of a symbolic gesture. Deedy grounds her tale in the real world, then finds just the right words. It takes a real author to know how to finish a tale of this sort perfectly, but Deedy's last sentence takes the cake. "Because there is no nation so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort."

Like Deedy, Gonzalez is also originally from Cuba, a fact that I found particularly interesting. In her Author blurb, Deedy says of herself "she came to the United States as a refugee and like most immigrants sees the world from multiple perspectives." Gonzalez does not discuss his perspective in his blurb, but it's clear that with this book he has debuted with something remarkably strong. His background is in graphic design and art direction and as a Georgia resident it's just remarkably lucky that he happened to be near the Atlanta-based Peachtree publisher. Now he has a picture book to his name that is far and away one of the most beautiful out there. The illustrations you find here are created in pastel, colored pencil, and airbrush. The result are these rich, full colors that transition beautifully between the early morning gloom of a jeep headed to a village on one page and the full-throttle reds and vibrant colors of a ritual on the next.

The artist also eschews stereotype and the easy way out. His images have the feel of a documentary, as well as a work of art. Like Deedy, Gonzalez acknowledges that these are warriors we're talking about. In one two-page spread you see just the heads of two men, one of them with their face in shadow, just the eyes looking steadily at the reader. These aren't people you mess with but, as the text says, "They are fierce when provoked, but easily moved to kindness when they hear of suffering or injustice."

Gonzalez is at his cleverest when he must invoke the feel of September 11th without actually showing it. This is something picture books about 9/11 have to do on a regular basis, but none of the books about that day have been quite so clever about presenting the incident visually. When Kimeli tells his story the reader is on the same level as the village children, looking up. Most of the two-page spread consists of the sky above with Kimeli lifting his arms in the telling of his tale. Above him, the sky is gray with streaks of red and orange. For anyone familiar with the images of September 11th, such colors are instantly recognizable. Gonzalez has taken a day, reduced it to color alone, and then placed it harmlessly in an African sky where it illustrates a terrible tale. It is the smartest illustration choice I have seen in a very long time. For that image alone, the book should win some awards. Of course, there is one shot of the towers burning in the eyes of a Maasai child at the end of the book, but that picture is far less powerful than the preceding image and, in fact, feels a bit superfluous in comparison.

I did hear one criticism of this book that I thought was fairly on point. Non-fiction books for kids walk a tricky line between telling their stories for their child audiences and telling stories for the adults who are actually buying these books in the first place. To bridge this gap, many times an author will tell their story for the kids at the start, then follow up their story in the Afterword or Author's Note at the end for the adults. This doesn't have to happen, of course. In The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Caldecott Honor Book) by Peter Sis, for example, the author cleverly created two narratives, one old and one young, so that kids of different ages and reading levels could all get something out of the material. The argument has been made that in the case of 14 Cows for America there are facts mentioned in the "Note from Kimeli Naiyomah" that should really have been in the text. Facts like what eventually happened to the cows (they are in Kenya "under the guidance of the revered elder Mzee Ole-Yiampoi"), which a lot of kids will be wondering when they finish this book. The kids will probably believe that when the Maasai "give" their cows to America they are physically sending the cows there, just as the King of Siam meant to sent President Lincoln elephants for the Civil War. The fact that this giving is a symbolic gesture could be better explained. And I agree that the cows' fate would have been nice to mention in the text, but I don't think the choice of including it at the end hurts the book too badly. I've read far too many non-fiction picture books where there ISN'T an Afterword or Author's Note of any sort, so at least this one is present. Should this information have been in the story? Sure. But if kids ask "What happened to the cows?" parents at least will be able to the Note and read their children what it says at the back. The option is there.

If I were to pair this book with any other, I think I might go so far as to suggest that people read 14 Cows for America alongside Lynn Barasch's rather fascinating First Come the Zebra. While Deedy's book examines the Maasai from within their own community, showing how they work with one another, Barasch's book then displays them alongside the Kikuyu and offers hope in the face of prejudice. Zebra shows that not everything is easy for the Maasai. Cows shows their concern and care for the rest of the world in spite of this.

On paper, this book shouldn't work. There are so many elements that could go horribly wrong. The story could be too treacly. The pictures too self-serving or patronizing. The writing too pandering. I'm the first person to view a book of this sort with a skeptical, even over-critical eye, but what I find here is a remarkable melding of three different people, coming together to tell a single true story. Fourteen Cows ends with the sentence, "The Maasai wish is that every time Americans hear this simple story of fourteen cows, they will find a measure of comfort and peace." With this book, that is now possible.

This ia a heart warming story about how people who live faraway and in a social structure far different from the United States reacted to 9/11. This book should be in all children s libraries and in elementary schools. Our Rotary Club has purchased copies for all our local schools and the town library, The author is a Rotary Scholar.

"14 Cows For America" is a beautifully illustrated children's picture book for young readers ages 6 to 10 and based upon a true story. On September 11, 2001, whil visiting the United nations headquarters in New York on that fateful day, Maasai tribesman and Stanford University student Kimeli Naiyomah was deeply affected by the events that cost the lives of so many Americans. Kimeli went back to his home in a Western Kenya village so remote that his tribe had not heard of the attack on America until he told them. The village reacted to Kimeli's sorrow and decided to do something for America. The Maasai people, being nomadic cattle herders, determined to gift as a gift to America fourteen of their best cattle because, to the tribe, the cow equals life. With the help of Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, Carmen Agra Deedy's retelling of this story and its humanitarian message is so perfectly enhanced throughout with the full-page color artwork of Thomas Gonzalez, makes "14 Cows For America" a truly wonderful and enthusiastically recommended addition to school and community library picture book collections for children.

This incredible story relates the response of the a Maasai tribe to the September 11th tragedy. When one of their members, who is studying in the US, relates the events of 9/11, the tribe responds with compassion. The illustrations and the poetic language work together to create an amazingly beautiful book. I highly recommend it!