25 April 2011 AFTER THE KILL by Darrin Lunde and Catherine Stock, ill., Charlesbridge, July 2011, 32p., ISBN: 978-1-57091-743-1

"It is early in the morning, and a hungry lioness is on the prowl.  She sees a herd of zebras grazing in the distance.  Mmmm -- zebra!  Her mouth begins to water."

AFTER THE KILL is a picture book that stopped me in my tracks.  Year after year, there are children's books set on the East Africa plain that look so posed, so static.  This is the antithesis of those books.  Page after page, this is a picture book that exudes vibrancy.

"The lioness crouches in the grass and creeps forward.

"One of the zebras seems weaker than the others, and she focuses on it.  The zebra twitches its ears, but does not see her.  The lioness creeps closer...closer...and then --" 

AFTER THE KILL portrays the tension between co-existing species -- predators, scavengers, and prey --  as the zebra killed by the lioness becomes, in turn, a meal for white-backed vultures, spotted hyenas, golden jackals, male lions, small lion cubs, lappet-faced vultures, and meat-eating beetles.

Reading and re-reading this book that pulsates with life and power and timelessness, I wanted to know: How did this book come to feel so different from anything I've seen before?  I decided to learn more about the author and the illustrator.

From a web page of questions and answers about the author, I found out that Darrin Lunde is a mammalogist who first went out seeking knowledge about taxidermy and organizing collection data when he was a middle school student on Staten Island.  Aided by his hard work in college, he grew up to successfully land his childhood dream job: working as an explorer for the American Museum of Natural History which, for both him and me, was a magical place to visit as a child.  Of working there, he wrote:

"Being part of the museum's unbroken chain of explorers is what means the most to me.  The museum explorers before me who went out, suffered hardships, took risks, and discovered new things are my ultimate heroes.  It's about more than adding nuggets of information to our vast storehouse of knowledge.  It's about the struggle to reach unfamiliar territory and the hard work that goes into discovering new things.  It's about continuing the tradition of exploration, and keeping the spirit of exploration alive."

Now he is working at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. 

I discovered that illustrator Catherine Stock grew up in Stockholm, Paris, South Africa, New Orleans, and San Francisco.  In colleges over three continents she studied art, education, communications, and design.  Of her younger years and a failed career she writes:

"So then I decided to get my teaching certificate in London.  What a shock!  I couldn't control the tough young kids in London's East End at all, and later, the older students at the Loughton College of Further Education were so bored and unmotivated, only interested in snoggling with each other at the back of the class.  Teaching suddenly became a matter of either discipline or entertainment.  It was so different from Africa, where kids sometimes walk for hours every day to get to school."

On her website, you can find photos of Catherine hanging out with lionesses.  Her illustrations for AFTER THE KILL are done in pencil, watercolor, and gouache. 

"White-backed vultures are such clumsy fliers that they sometimes crash-land near a kill with a forward somersault.  They have hooked tongues that keep other vultures from snatching slippery meat out of their mouths."

There are two texts in AFTER THE KILL.  There is the narrative, as the various creatures either chase one another away or sneak in for a piece of the kill.  And there is the smaller-sized additional information about the different species who make up the story -- a story that does not even begin to stand still until the final page, when we are left with the white, bleached skeleton of the zebra on the Serengeti Plain. 

This is a significant work that is sure to inspire young artists, animal lovers, and ecologists.