The Foreign Service Journal, November 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2018 49 1980. During her Foreign Service career she served in Lagos, Bucharest (twice), Athens, Freetown, Dar es Salaam, New Delhi and Washington, D.C. Four years after her 2002 retirement Mun- shi returned to head a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Baquba, Iraq, from 2006 to 2007. A fluent speaker of Romanian and frequent visitor to the country, she earned her doctorate in Romanian history from the University of Bucharest in 2006. Animal Village By Nelda LaTeef, 2018, $16.95/hardcover, 36 pages. Drought has struck an animal village in West Africa, but Timba the tortoise is determined to save her village from devastation. In an emergency meeting about the lack of water, Timba speaks up. She tells of her plan to find water, and while the other animals balk at her suggestion, the village chief supports her. When immediate results aren’t forthcoming, the other animals grow frustrated and lash out at Timba. Cast off from the village, she must search for water on her own. Eventually finding it, she rushes back to share her discovery with the village inhabitants, despite having been jeered just days before. In the eyes of the animals, Timba is a hero, so they make her the new chief. She sees the ceremony as an opportunity to share some advice: working together makes everyone stronger; work- ing hard gets the job done; and when the work is slow, patience must be upheld. Encased in LaTeef’s own lively illustrations using acrylic, India ink and collage images, this moral lesson makes for a delightful children’s story. Born into a Foreign Service family, Nelda LaTeef attended schools in Tunisia, Afghanistan, Italy, Niger, Nigeria, Lebanon and Senegal. She first heard the folklore that inspired this book from a storyteller in the Republic of Niger. A cum laude graduate of Harvard University, she is author of The Hunter and the Ebony Tree (2002) and Working Women for the 21st Century: Fifty Women Reveal Their Pathways to Success (1992), which the New York Public Library recommends to young adult readers.