1. Animals
2. Community
3. Courage
4. Elephants
5. Resilience
6. Social life and customs
7. War

Often endpapers suggest the story to come. Here a young elephant marches across the endpapers, clearly struggling to walk with only three legs. What has happened? The setting for this story is the mountainous rainforests of Asia, where underground mines from previous conflicts remain below ground. This story is about a young boy and his community that rally around unfortunate Mali, the young elephant that steps on a landmine, loses her leg and slowly recovers.

The drama begins when Mali reaches for tasty bananas and steps on a mine which explodes across the double page spread. The oversize text shouts, ‘BOOM!’ The following black double page reflects Mali’s new world as the jungle falls ‘deathly still and silent’.

This realistic story features a complementary artistic design. There is plenty of white space surrounding the illustrations in bold lines created by Sally Heinrich’s hand coloured lino prints in strong and deep colours. Her intricately designed borders capture both culture and the environment while inviting a closer look. The artist reveals that her lino print patterns are based partly on traditional designs and incorporate Buddhist symbols. She worked from photographic images of elephants and the environment, as well as reference material gathered during visits to Cambodia and Laos. The resulting artwork strongly complements the text’s strong emotional appeal.

During Mali’s recovery young Luk comforts her, reminding Mali of the beautiful surrounding mountain streams, gold sunsets and her favourite bananas. Supportive too are the robed Monks who pray for Mali. She slowly recovers and with a new ‘leg’ created for her, Mali enjoys life again. In a wordless illustration, we see that young Luk has also lost his leg, prompting discussion among young viewers.

There is brief factual information after the story ends about landmines, including United Nations information revealing that there are more than 110 million active mines scattered across 70 countries.

1. Magpies review by Patricia Halsall of ‘One Step at a Time’, 10 May 2015 https://midnightsunpublishing.com/2015/05/reviews-of-one-step-at-a-time/
2. Books+Publishing review by Margaret Hamilton for ‘One Step at a Time’, 14 Jan 2015 https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2015/01/14/32065/one-step-at-a-time-jane-jolly-illus-by-sally-heinrich-midnightsun/
3. Review by Sara Khamkoed of ‘One Step at a Time’, 23 Aug 2016 https://sarakhamkoed.com/2016/08/23/celebrating-a-thai-tale-for-book-week
4. Teacher’s notes for ‘One Step at a Time’ includes links to resources such as landmines and Buddhism https://lukandmali.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/teacher-notes.pdf