The Elephant

Book in new condition. Beautifully written and illustrated. I love how the book shows up within the illustrations. Satisfying for large range of ages. My 20 month old grandson loves seeing the pictures and at 69 I love learning more about elephants and I also love the illustrations.

This is a wonderful true story about elephants that I know my granddaughter is going to love but I was a bit disappointed in the ripped paper cover on the hardback book. I don’t know if I should have it replaced or not

I used this with my class and they loved it. They could easily relate the pictures with the text and get the message

Absolutely gorgeous and informative about all facts elephant! I learned a lot too! For those who love elephants it’s a must! For those who love animals it’s a must! For those who teach about elephants it’s a must!

Great book but seems a little much for my two year old grandson with all the words per page. Im saving it.

The pictures are really cool but the facts are a little too much I think for small children.....unless you are ready to have that reproductive discussion

Book was just as described, thank you.

The power of this book is in the way Desmond portrays the young boy interacting with the information he is learning in his own book about elephants. The first illustration shows a boy (with a red paper crown) in a room in his home looking at a book that is clearly about elephants. Then through the rest of the book Desmond weaves in illustrations of this boy engaged in reading/learning/thinking about this book. In a sense the reader is experiencing what the boy experiences for himself as he reads. For example, when Desmond writes that the African savanna elephant male can weigh up to seven tons or as much as four large cars, you see an illustration of the boy looking up at a stack of four cars with an elephant just behind the cars. We, the reader of Desmond’s book, are seeing what the boy as a reader is visualizing. This is brilliant!!!There are illustrations of just elephants (with no little boy)—and they are stunning. There is one two-page spread of an elephant looking at you, the reader. Honestly, I could just sit and look back for a while. There is a two-page spread with a map and key—illustrating where elephants live in Africa and Asia. There’s another two-page spread with the African Savanna elephant on one side and the Asian elephant on the other—and labels for their body parts that reveal similarities and differences between the two.Desmond’s writing has a flow. Some of the facts will feel familiar and then there are (for me at least) facts that felt less familiar. For example, she describes how the skin around their ears and on other soft spots like the belly is paper thin. In contrast, the skin on other parts of their body can be up to an inch thick. “No matter how tough and leathery an elephant’s skin looks, it is sensitive and full of nerve endings. An elephant can even feel the feet of the tiniest fly landing on its back.” She also provides several connected facts on each sub-topic – so that whole page I just described is about the elephant’s skin. She’s not guilty of cramming in too many facts but instead helps the reader reach some depth of understanding on a particular aspect of the elephant.I’d read this aloud to k-3 students or book talk and leave for any age to grab up and savor. (Every kid deserves a chance to read this book.)SUGGESTION FOR AN INTERACTIVE READ ALOUD –There are lots of reasons to read this aloud but one that stands out for me is the discussion you can have with kids about HOW THEY MIGHT EXPERIENCE NONFICTION for themselves. There is JOY in reading nonfiction and the boy in the book is feeling it ;). You could read this aloud with just a focus on what the boy is doing to make sense of the text. He’s using comparisons Desmond provides to the boy’s everyday world to help him visualize or think about particular aspects of the elephant. Here’s another example of how she does that. The text reads:Tusks keep growing as elephants age, so an old African savanna bull might have tusks that weigh 100 pounds each and measure up to eight feet long, the same length as two seven-year-old children toe to toe.Accompanying this text is an image of an elephant with tusks and the young boy and a friend laying toe to toe on the elephant’s tusks. Lots of authors of nonfiction do this for their readers—this kind of discussion could launch students into making better sense of other texts they read and also just finding the pleasure in reading nonfiction.SUGGESTION FOR BOOK TALKING –I’d hold up a few of the two-page layouts I’ve described in this review or that jump out at you and ask students, “What do you notice?” and “What do you think you’ll be learning about?” I think the illustrations say so much on their own—students will want to pick this book up to read on their own.

Great book! Nothing else left to say

Fantastic narrative with interesting facts. My children enjoyed this read aloud.