I am because you are
on The Rhino Who Swallowed the Storm
When I was a child, I wanted to be grown. All of 12 years old and I longed for 19, just a touch above 18, as if they made me some kinda big dog. And so in my youth, I told myself I didn’t like children’s books. Avoided them, found them oh-so-rudimentary. Then I was actually grown, with little niblings of my own and I began to consider good books I might share with them, realizing that I might have actually deprived myself of something special way back when.
This year, I have opened my mind to the magic of children’s books. Of the expansive worlds welcoming young, imaginative minds. And what a wonderful initiation into this world I found in LeVar Burton’s The Rhino Who Swallowed the Storm.
The Rhino Who Swallowed the Storm
Did you know our beloved LeVar Burton wrote a children’s book called The Rhino Who Swallowed the Storm? It’s been on my radar since it’s release over a decade ago, but of course, “I don’t read children’s books.”
A while ago, I’d added it to a list for one of my several little niblings with plans to buy it on a birthday, or a holiday, or some special time they didn’t expect. I never did. Something in me said, “Hold on.” Perhaps my subconscious was waiting until a time I appreciated these books just as much as they might.
Friends, that time has arrived.
I checked it out at my local library along with another book for kids…but this one, in particular, has lingered in my mind. In it, a dear little mouse named Mica is afraid. There is a storm booming late in the night and last year, a similar storm destroyed her entire home.
“I’m scared, Papa,” she says. So Papa Mouse tells her a tale of Little Rhinoceros who lived long, long ago, “before there were words…”
At first, Little Rhinoceros was so happy. He loved his home, his friends, his life.
Then a great storm threatened his entire world. Little Rhinoceros witnessed turmoil right before his very eyes as it began to demolish everything in it’s wake. Pain and sorrow all around as his friends and family struggled to stay alive. He worried, and he panicked, and then this Rhino swallowed up the entire storm to save everyone else.
Shortly thereafter, he found himself in hollowed earth, trapped inside with a live storm in his belly.
What to do, he wondered.
Then a spider appeared, told him that he was not alone. That he must trust his friends; allow them to pull him from the hole he’d found himself in. Success! He was released but still heavy, full of the storm and foggy in the brain because of it.
Bees told him, “After every dark night, there comezzz a new day. Beee kind, do your best, and you’ll find a way…”
And so he trusted his friends again and again: a tortoise helped him through the mud, and a kangaroo, and when he cried out the storm and it became a sea, a whale carried him on its back to solid land.
Finally, Little Rhinoceros was free. Light and airy again with no storm in his body, and his friends were safe and well. He was a hero. But he never could have succeeded without the loving care from his community.
Here we are now, in 2025. Just the sound of the year between your ears might cause a stir. But this year cannot be a year wrapped in loneliness. In siloed existences as if we are each living this life alone. Impossible.
I’m reminded of Ubuntu, an African philosophy that tells us, I am because you are. European philosophies, white supremacist philosophies, tell us, “We think, therefore we are.” But dare I say that’s just not enough. It can’t be. It never was.
“I” cannot be without you, nor “you” without me. And as these little storms live within all of us this year and beyond, Burton reminds us we may look outside ourselves for community. For a collective, imaginative new. New something.
I have no idea what our new world will look like, but I know without a shadow of a doubt it requires all of us with a desire for something better to be together.
I should have known Uncle LeVar would come all the way through with A Word. And I’m sure there are other messages this big and loving, with words simple enough for all to understand, that exist in some other, unassuming children’s book.
Please, if you know of one, drop it in the comments for the people.
I hope you all find your people or, at the very least, feel connected through our collective dream for a better tomorrow.
Before I go, I’d like to share an essay I wrote almost two years ago. A version of it was scheduled to be in a ~major publication~ and then nixed at the last minute with no real explanation. But it’s truth still reverberates for me. Perhaps it will speak to you as well…
Bless y’all. I hope you find pockets of peace and joy… until we meet again.
Jasper