Kathi Appelt: Hello, I'm Kathi Appelt. My book is called Once Upon a Camel and it's got beautiful, beautiful art on the exterior and the interior by the Caldecott-winning artist, Eric Rohmann. Years and years ago, when I was a little girl, my grandfather told me that there were wild camels in west Texas, and since he was my grandfather, I believed him. I mean, why wouldn't I? So the question that I carried around for years and years was why wouldn't there be wild camels in West Texas, after all, if my grandfather said there were, then why not? But the question I should have been asking and I most recently asked was why, why were there wild camels in west Texas? Because there are plenty of reasons why there wouldn't be. For one thing they're not indigenous to West Texas, unless you go back like 10,000 years when there were large camels back then but not recently.

That started me on my journey, and in the process, I discovered that back in the 1850s, the US army did an experiment in which they imported about eighty camels to use as pack animals between Texas and California. They needed reliable transportation, and somebody suggested camels. So they tried it. There was some research online that the best thing that I found was an actual journal. One of the members of the group that went to the Middle East, tasked with finding the camels kept a journal. It's a first hand look. It's original. It's like getting a really up close and personal look at the camel experiment as it unfolded. And so it was wonderful to have that resource, first of all. And then there were other accounts that were at the time. And since then, there have been many other people that have written about it. I'm not the first.

What I hope is that the notion that stories are vital to our wellbeing. That's what I hope readers will take away with this. Zada, the main character who is the old camel is named for Scheherazade, who is the most famous storyteller of all time. Most young readers know her by her story about Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. She told stories to save her life. And so my old camel, Zada, is tasked with saving the lives of this pair of baby birds. And one of the ways that she manages to get them to shelter and to save them is by telling story after story after story. And to also see that we don't have to be just alike to share our stories. Zada is a giant camel and the little birds are teeny tiny. So no matter what your size or age or inclination all of that, when we sit down and share stories, we can actually save each other. That's what I hope people will take away from this.

I'm going to read from Chapter Twelve. And this takes place in Smyrna, Turkey, which is where Zada and her best friend Asiye were born, was in this town called Smyrna. If you look on a map today, Smyrna is now called İzmir. So the name of the city has changed since Zada was there. So I'm just going to read this excerpt. And it takes place when Zada and her best friend Asiye are very young camels.

On warm summer nights, Teodor left the stall doors open so that they could enjoy the cool breezes that floated in from the Aegean Sea. In the darkness, they stood next to each other, their heads resting on each other's backs. Above them, the Camel Constellation gazed down on them. It was led by the Camel Chief. He was easy to discern because the star that formed his eye was somewhat blue, bluer than the others, at any rate. Zada only had to locate that star, and she could find the rest of the caravan. Dromedaries, Bactrians, the ancient Camelops, the gigantic Titanotylopus. They lined up against the very ceiling of the universe heading east, always east as if they were walking straight into the rising sun.

While they stood there, watching the stars, Asiye said, "I have a wish."

"A wish?" Said Zada.

"Yes," said Asiye. "I wish I could run so fast that the wind could lift me straight up to the sky.

"Asiye!" said Zada. "That is an excellent wish."

And then, at the same time, they said, "We could become stars!"

"The brightest stars," said Asiye. And from then on, their motto was "En parlak yildiz ol." Become the brightest star.