Melissa Bradley, Indagare

Thanks to the trunked heroes of Dumbo and Babar, I don't know one kid who hasn't secretly (or not-so-secretly) dreamed of being friends with an elephant.  So I kept the elephant-sanctuary part of our family safari a surprise until the end. Established by Dame Daphne Sheldrick in honor of her husband, who was the founding warden of Tsavo national park, the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust operates an orphanage, where wild baby-animal orphans are raised until they can be released back into the wild. The orphans--primarily elephants but also the occasional rhino, zebra and eland--arrive from all over East Africa. Here is my daughter petting a baby rhino:

Melissa Biggs Bradley, Indagare

"Mom this is like Planet Earth but better," gasped my 9-year-old son when we came across a huge herd of giraffe in the Serengeti. "It's a journey of giraffe," my daughter announced, "that's what they call a group of giraffe." We had been on safari only three days, but we were all collecting animal facts. "And it's a troop of baboon and a dazzle of zebras," my son chimed in. We hadn't seen a TV or computer in days and none of us was missing them. Why would my son need Indiana Jones, when he was allowed to sit in a tracker seat on the hood of a Land Rover and scan the bushes for animals himself? I went on my first safari at twelve and had wanted to take my kids as soon they were old enough. "It's good that you brought them young," one of our guides told me, "because what they see and learn will grow with them." From our first stop at Giraffe Manor in Kenya, where the majestic beauties craned their necks in the window of the breakfast room for kibble, my kids were hooked. They peppered the guides with questions and soaked up the answers. When we had to wake early for game drives at Klein's Camp in Tanzania, they didn't grumble like they do on school days. They were dressed, binoculars and cameras slung around their necks, and eager to go in minutes.