Ten-year-old Yanxuan lives in the South Chinese Mountains and loves what every girl loves: singing and dancing like the stars on television. Her greatest wish, though, is to celebrate her birthday with the whole family.

The animated drawings from the 19th and 20th century invite us to marvel and tell us how the people in the past imagined our present.

A mahout and his peculiar herd of curious and stubborn pachyderms live on a ...