Never Take Your Rhino on a Plane tells the story of a young boy who takes his pet rhinoceros on a plane. And as with all trips with a pet rhinoceros, everything you think could go wrong does! It’s a book inspired by my own terrible plane experience. I thought it would be a clever and fun read-aloud. I also wanted it to be a conversation piece for travel and travel behavior, particularly the things we shouldn’t do to annoy our seatmates or travel buddies while we are in the air.
Isabel Roxas’s illustrations are funny and unexpected. I really chuckle when Rhino raises his hooves to reveal his stench, tries to prank our napping protagonist, and shows up for his scuba diving class. I love how you forget you are even looking at cut paper illustrations. Several of the family members and friends I’ve shown the book to don’t even realize that it’s construction paper and pastels that make up the illustrations for the book. They certainly didn’t teach us how to use construction paper like that in grade school.
Picture books are my way to stay connected to the classroom, even though I’m no longer in the space. As a teacher who has had classroom and museum experience, I have a passion for education, child advocacy, and sentence-making in general. Picture books are my ways to stay connected to that, to make people laugh, imagine, challenge, and think outside of themselves.
Never Take Your Rhino on a Plane’s illustrations were created using cut paper, crayons and pencils.
A rhinoceros is a ton of fun to draw, especially the rambunctious, naughty kind. Our blue Rhino is practically all belly—you can hear him galumphing into a room! It’s nice to be able to play with that kind of volume moving around a space.
Borrow Never Take Your Rhino on a Plane from your school or public library. Whenever possible, please support independent bookshops.
