My Travels with Clara by Mary Tavener Holmes, illustrated by Jon Cannell (J. Paul Getty Museum, distributed by Oxford University Press, $17.95, 9780892368808/0892368802, 32 pp., ages 4-up, September 2007)

This charming picture book captures the childhood feeling of awe during that maiden voyage to the zoo and the realization that there are creatures larger than we are. "It was love at first sight," Holmes's text begins, as the author imagines what the real Douwe Van der Meer (who narrates) might have been thinking when he first laid eyes on Clara the rhinoceros in India in the late 1730s. Imagine a time when "few people in Europe had ever seen a real rhinoceros, or even a picture of one." Such was the case for Mr. Van der Meer. Luckily for the Dutch sea captain, Clara had essentially eaten her original owner out of house and home, so Van der Meer bought her and took Clara aboard his "good ship Knabenhoe" to sail her to Holland. Cannell's mixed-media illustrations in earth tones of ochre and rust unfold against backdrops of sky blue. Pen-and-inks and watercolor wash trace the ship's journey from Calcutta to Rotterdam in 1741, the timber raft that took Clara on a tour down the Rhine ("We must let the world see Clara, and let Clara see the world!" says Van der Meer), and even the pulley system used to weigh the nearly 5,000-lb. specimen.

Holmes and Cannell include plenty of humorous details, such as Clara's fondness for oranges and tobacco ("If I had been smoking my pipe--or eating an orange--she licked my face. She had a soft tongue, like a puppy's"). Sure to be the favorite fact among young readers: When Clara loses her horn, another grows back in its place. Acting as testimonials to 18th-century artists' fascination with Clara, the book's illustrations incorporate photos of actual artifacts created in the rhino's likeness: a porcelain figurine by Johann Joachim Kändler, a Clara Commemorative Medal ("possibly by or after Jean-Daniel Kamm") and a life-size (roughly 10' x 14') oil canvas, Rhinoceros, by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, which is currently on exhibition at the Getty Museum--all of which are also reproduced on a final spread with informative captions. This brief journey back in time brings a present-day immediacy to the feeling of wonder that animals inspire in us all.--Jennifer M. Brown