NEVILLE'S OASIS

In Howeth’s picture book, a camel runs away after a scolding from his owner but soon starts to miss the life he’s left behind.

Neville, an expressive, one-humped camel, lives in the desert with Zaheed, a bearded Arab man in white turban and robes. Zaheed is a caring owner. He feeds Neville twigs and dried figs, scratches Neville’s ears, and always speaks softly to him…until Neville accidentally treads on his compass. Then, Zaheed swears, and Neville takes offence: “That’s the thanks I get for all the times I haven’t stepped on his compass.” Urged on by a scarab beetle (called “Beetle”), Neville runs away in search of an oasis, but he finds only mirages. He begins to miss the twigs Zaheed fed him, and, after a sandstorm blows through, he could really use an ear-scratch. Neville and Beetle do at last come to an oasis, but for all its comforts, it isn’t home. Neville races across the dunes to a joyous reunion with Zaheed. Howeth tells Neville’s story in elegant, nonrhyming prose, presented in a faux-handwritten font across Bishop’s delightful two-page-spread illustrations, which combine wavery watercolors with scratchy ink outlines to capture the many hues and shifting outlines of the desert landscape, as well as Neville’s outrage, exhaustion, disillusionment, and elation. Readers of all ages will enjoy both his journey and its destination.

A sumptuous exploration of home and heart.