Elephants Books

But cute anyway. No child I've ever known will fall asleep easily after this book - it'll have him or her up, listening for sounds! Still, as an after-nap story, it's adorable - maybe even a chance to find out how your little one interprets the noises they hear as they go to sleep.

Benjy has a hard time falling asleep because the sounds around him drive his imagination wild. A dripping faucet is an elephant in the tub, and a garbage truck is a landing spacecraft, among others. (If they're young enough, they won't even ask about a garbage truck picking up garbage at bedtime!) Benjy's Mom, of course, knows what's keeping him awake and comes to tuck him in and send him off to sleep.

The copy I've got is fully-colored, so don't buy it based on the idea of coloring it in. Buy it because every kid wants to know that they're not the only one who's heard a round-up going on in their living room at night.

This book is a great story to read to children right before bedtime, or naptime! It shows kids that it is ok to be imaginative. It also teaches parents to listen to what their children have to say. This book is only partially colored which maybe used as a coloring book, to further the entertainment of a child. If only adults kept reading this book, maybe their imagination's could keep runing wild as though they were children.

cute book. I know mu sisters will like this. and i will be fun for my baby sister to learn about useful engines and to help others in need. so im adding this to her wish list now.

Let me tell you about my experience with the Thomas and Friends 'Step-into-Reading' books. Some of them are very good. The 'retelling' of the story works and the book is a total success. Others, like this one, fall a little short. In this case, there are gaps in the storyline you could fit an elephant into. Likewise, for a book meant for those who need help reading, there are some larger vocabulary words than you might expect.

More difficult words include: grumbled, something, grunted, foreman, scary, hardest, backwards, and laughed.

That said, I still give this book fairly high marks SIMPLY because of the subject: Henry! And as long as your child is already familiar with the story, he/she probably won't note the continuity problems. And I have found with my son (now 5) that he will soon learn any new words simply because he is so darned motivated to read about one of his favorite Steamies. So...

Four Stars. Very Good Artwork. Okay Read-aloud. The retelling of the story is rather dubious, but that fact is more than offset by the motivational topic. "Henry and the Elephant" can be enjoyed by non-reading youngsters, and I would say that it would serve as a reader for children with about 6 months solid reading experience under their belts. [No 'official' reading level designation could be found by this mom.]

Find following some text from the book so you can judge for yourself:

The Foreman had a plan.
Henry could push trucks
into the tunnel.

"Wheesh," said Henry.
Henry did not like
tunnels.
He was scared.

For ages 4-8.
Black elephants, white elephants, they don't like each other elephants. The peace-loving elephants of both packs hide in the jungle to avoid the growing tension. The black and white elephants battle one another until the death. None survive and the world and nature carry on without them...until one day, out of the jungle appear gray elephants. They lived together peacefully, but after a while, some rumblings were heard about little and small ear differences. The reader is left to predict the possibilities.

From David McKee's story, children can learn indirectly about the circular history of arrogance and racism. Children are confronted with the reality of persecution and how intolerance has repeated itself throughout history with no good ending. Children may be led to appreciate that they are responsible for acting with tolerance toward different peoples and should be led to embrace diversity.

This book has a suprise ending. It is excellent in using with children to show them that if we look hard enough we can always find something to start a conflict about. The point being-most of what we find is petty

Phil had to be at least slightly peeved. In 2004 he wrote and published the amusing little book, "Twenty-One Elephants". It was an amusing and slightly fictionalized retelling of that magnificent publicity stunt P.T. Barnum engineered with his pachyderm crew over the newly finished bridge across the boroughs. Then, in 2005, out comes "Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing" by April Jones Prince. Same story but without the adorable little girl story Bildner had added to his tale. Compare the two and you'll find that Prince is all-facts all-the-time while Bildner uses the already existing facts to make a cute l'il ole story. Bildner might have ended up with the less popular of the two titles had he not been paired with illustrator extraordinaire, LeUyen Pham. I've recently converted into a Pham fan myself, and to my mind she can do very little wrong. Though "Twenty-One Elephants" will not provide you with as factual a book as its more recent successor, it's a story that's bound to appeal to kids from Brooklyn and beyond.

When the Brooklyn Bridge was first built in 1884 it was considered to be an architectural marvel by the critics. By the people who'd actually have to travel over it, however, it looked dangerous. For young Hannah, the bridge has been slowly going up her entire life. Now that it is finished, however, Hannah's father considers the structure too flimsy to risk his only daughter on. Determined to convince her papa that it is safe, Hannah appeals first to her immediate family, then her schoolmates, and finally her neighbors. No one can believe that the Brooklyn Bridge is safe, though. In an attempt to cheer his little girl up, Hannah's father takes her to the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Once there, she hatches a plan and gets the attention of Mr. P.T. Barnum himself. Soon thereafter, P.T. Barnum and all twenty-one of his elephants traipse across the Brooklyn Bridge and Hannah's father is at last convinced that the structure really is safe. An Author's Note gives us the facts of the matter and there is a helpful bibliography that provides more information on the event.

Of course there was no little girl named Hannah. Mr. Barnum was perfectly capable of thinking up publicity stunts on his own without any outside preschooler intervention. Author Phil Bildner acknowledges this fact in his Author's Note with the statement that, "Surely, somewhere in Brooklyn, there must have been a little girl who saw the bridge as her opportunity. And who's to say that some little girl - some little Hannah - wasn't the source of his [P.T. Barnum's] inspiration?". Who indeed? I remember being in elementary school as a child and learning about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. At the time, I didn't quite understand why a Michigan kid should have to learn about a bridge that was so very far away from Kalamazoo. Looking at this book, the appeal of the process is now greater. Bildner, who until now has limited himself to nostalgic baseball picture books, slips true-to-life facts into this book via Hannah's mouth. He also does nice things with repetition and having a little girl character who knows better than her peers but not in a pesky or annoying way.

As I mentioned before, I'm a big big LeUyen Pham fan. If you get a chance, definitely seek out her webpage for glimpses into her other work. In this particular book, Ms. Pham gives us a rather bright and cheery look at 1880's Brooklyn. Costumes, ethnicities, tenements, and cobblestone streets are all brought to bright and sparkling life. Ms. Pham gives Hannah a particularly apple-cheeked shiny look, one that doesn't necessarily suit her at times. There's an illustration of Hannah in the schoolroom where the other girls laughing behind her look like nothing so much as three-dimensional Campbell Soup kids, all missing teeth and sporting near-identical faces. Still, it's this very rounded quality that makes the book so doggone appealing. I also loved the fact that Hannah had scribbled facts about the Brooklyn Bridge, including a graphed drawing of it, on her slate at her desk in school. It's enough to make me forgive the completely stereotyped school librarian included as well.

The book's a beaut, no question. If you don't mind indulging your kids in a little Brooklyn-centered historical fiction, then I do indeed recommend this tale. A fun story that takes some small liberties with an amusing late 19th-century spectacle.

This review first appeared in the "Ephrata (PA) Review":

The author, a middle-school teacher, has spun a captivating story around a historical event-the building of the Brooklyn Bridge in the late 1800s, and the initial hesitation of many residents to trust in it and use it.

Little Hannah's father is one of the doubters. Although Hannah grows up watching the bridge go up, and exhibits ceaseless fascination for the huge structure, her father "always clutched her hand a little tighter and drew in his breath a little deeper whenever she peered out at the modern marvel."

When they attend the circus, the herd of 21 elephants, Jumbo at the lead, gives Hannah an idea. She approaches P.T. Barnum to ask to borrow the elephants, but the great showman has already thought of the idea himself. "Great minds think alike, little lady," he tells Hannah.

The rest, of course, is verifiable history. Jumbo did indeed lead the herd across the Brooklyn Bridge on May 17, 1884, putting to rest doubts about the structure's safety and strength.

Bildner has engineered a deft blending of fiction and fact to construct a tender story, and Pham has illuminated it in golden tones, imparting an old-fashioned feel, and warmth between the doting father and his darling Hannah.

This child's tale has so many of life's lesson in it, I'm always amazed the story isn't given more attention. Perhaps it is because the original cartoon came out in 1941 and it is considered "old hat."

I couldn't disagree more. The story contains lessons on misjudging people; the value of friendship; the importance of believing in yourself. It explores the importance of the mother-child relationship.

This book isn't considered fine literature. It probalby will never be found in a school of higher learning. But, maybe it should.

My all time favorite.

This book is well known and just about everyone has herd of Dumbo or have seen the movie or have read it. This book is about the world today how some people make fun of other people for there looks and they shouldn't be. Dumbo was born with big ears and wants to fine help. He gets help from a mouse and some birds. They try to make Dumbo fly with his big ears. Now Dumbo can fly and is the star of the Circus and Dumbo was happy. He ended up being the star and the crowd cheered.

This short collection of poems is not bad, considering what trainwrecks books of poems by non-poets can be. Thematically, this book covers the same sort of territory that DANDELION WINE covers in novel form. However, unlike DANDELION WINE, WHEN ELEPHANTS...sheds some of the innocence of the narrator and allows sexual lust and fulfillment to play a role often throughout the work. He has a particular attachment to the word "seeding", which struck me as somewhat out of place, but eventually grew on me.

The poems range from 1 to 5 pages and are generally pretty narrative, though Bradbury does occasionally wander into lyrical wordplay. There are several poems that stand out from the crowd: the opening poem, "Rememberance"; "Telling Where the Sweet Gums Are"; "The Beast Upon the Wire"; and "Old Mars, Then Be a Hearth to Us" were some of my favorites. There are also a fair number of groaners involved, but you can quickly move past them in a book of this sort. Probably the most disturbing aspect of the collection is the dependence on traditional and slant rhyme, a convention that was wearing thin even in the 1970s. It is not in every poem that Bradbury deploys this device, but too often still.

Overall, I would guess that this book is probably going to be for fans of Bradbury's previous work only. If you have not read his novels, they are a much better place to begin. But for an established Bradbury affecionado, this book will be a welcome, and oft-revisited, addition.

...and then delighted! Bradbury's poetry is a mixture of fancy, personal history, articulate emotion, cleverness, history and wit. Special bonus? Sly literary, historical, spiritual, scientific and anthropological references that you pull out of the poem delightedly, with the feeling that you've solved a clever puzzle. I have since read and reread this book, and have collected the rest of his poetry books (not easy, they are hard to find).

I first read Flying Under Bridges and adored that book. The author has an uncanny ability to present very dark and disturbing topics and then disect these topics to find the absurd, the laughable. I feel the author is very good at tying together her characters and, of course, developing them fully. Whistling for Elephants is a coming of age story, a memoir of sorts of a young awkward child in a dysfunctional family finding acceptance at a zoo with the zoo's staff---all of whome have interesting lives to share. It is much more than this, but that is the bare bones! Enjoy!

Whistling For The Elephants is the story of tomboyish Dorothy, who at the age of ten is whisked off by her parents to a small town in America where she struggles to fit in. During the long summer while all the other kids are at summer camp, she comes across the old zoo, and meets the strange people who live there. The zoo is endangered by the local redneck mayor, who wants to knock it all down and build a football stadium in its place. Only the women of the zoo can stand against him, and Dorothy learns much about history, the townspeople, and herself in the process. It's an excellent book, a tragicomedy rite of passage and it's a really good read. Well worth getting.

Clear-writing, details, many interesting elephant facts. For example, "Although elephants are very large, they are able to run short distances as fast as a galloping house." Book design is varied and appealing yet non-cluttered and clean looking. There are excellent photos and some illustrations. There is a glossary and an index. Karen Woodworth-Roman, Children's Science Book Review

Elephant tails can be 5 feet long, African elephants can be 13 feet high and Asian elephants can weigh 12,000 pounds. These are just a few of the many fascinating facts children will learn by reading this book. Children may know that elephants do have good memories, but they might not have known that elephants walk on tiptoes, flap their big ears to keep cool, and that their trunks can reach higher than a giraffe. Wonderful photographs accompany the interesting text.

I loved Just So Stories as a child, and the stories are - for the most part - still really wonderful. Be aware if you are buying this for someone, however, that some of the stories are less than flattering to minorities and one of the stories does use the word "nigger," so this is definitely a book for someone who is old enough to talk to about language and what's appropriate and so on.

This was the 2nd book in my Grandson's Birthday Present. I am told that it is a big hit with my 3 other grand children as well.

I thought I had written a review on this previously, but I think it had a slightly different title (complete just so stories) so I'll write one for this particular title. I was given this book years ago, when my son was 3, by a friend of mine. He told me I should read the stories first and pick out the ones that I felt would be appropriate for my son, which I did. He loved the stories, particularly "how the rhinoceros got his skin," and I read it to him almost every night (we had been reading all Disney stories up until then). There were about 2 or 3 other stories in the book that we also read. It was wonderful and made him smile before going to sleep, always important! Yes, there are phrases, etc., in the book that are inappropriate, but Disney also has some pretty embarrassing things in their books, as well. Really. Read the things you intend to read to your children, and make decisions based on your perception of content. It's an excellent book, with some very excellent stories. My son still remembers that book, and still loves the stories. Because I sold the book when we moved, I purchased a new one for a friend just having a baby recently. As I was told years ago, I told her to read the stories first and find the ones that she liked, and felt were good for her child.

Very poor quality. There are symbols and characters in the text. Also, there are picture captions inside the text with no pictures. There are page numbers and the book title in the middle of the text. The first letter beginning each story is missing. No stars, sorry, even though I had to give them one because the computer won't let you do it otherwise. I did read these to the children, but wow, it was hard figuring out what to leave out and what to leave in because the pictures (that aren't there) have captions in the text. Really bad.

As a child I read these wonderful stories, read them to my child and now he's reading them to his children. How can you get through life not knowing how the Elephant Got His Trunk or how the Camel Got His Hump. In these days of uncertainty, these questions beg to be answered. Even now, and I'm 60, I can quote passages from this book to unenlightened friends and have gotten some of them to read this to themselves and grand children. For so many years, Kipling was out of favor, it's nice that a new generation of children are reading these wonderful stories.

This is a great book with a classic theme - and a fantastic depiction of a long-gone time and place. In a nutshell: the rich, snotty, spoiled, neglected teenager who's never done a day's work in his life falls off his Atlantic ocean-liner and ends up rescued by a tough, working-class fishing schooner where they refuse to believe he's rich, refuse to take his nonsense, and instead impress him into work - and in so doing help him find his humanity. I love the theme not just for its overt message, but because of the metaphor it encapsulates: that anyone can blossom in the right environment. Kudos, Rudyard Kipling: not bad for a book written in 1897!

Now my complaints:

1) The book dragged, especially in the paunchy middle. Too often the drama faded and the story became an endless repetition of fisherman's chores. Here I skimmed, to little loss.

2) Many of the fisherman's stories made no sense to me, and it wasn't for lack of trying on my side. Frustrating! Many times I found myself wishing for textual annotations.

3) In that vein: I found a hefty chunk of the dialogue unreadable. I'm pretty good at reading phonetics, which helped a lot, but many times when I decoded a word it proved only to be obscure, archaic maritime vocabulary.

4) I get tired of books (modern or old) that extol violence as a necessary cure for spoiled kids. Yes, I understand how the captain punching the boy in the nose "worked" in this context, but violence proponents (and Kipling) too easily ignore the twisted motives hidden behind parental violence, not to mention the reality that violence ultimately begets resentment, primitiveness, and more violence.

This is an excellent book for a young man, especially. It reminds us that character is developed through struggle, and that spoiling a child does him no good. I recommend that you give this book to any young boy who longs for adventure, but doesn't realize that it tends to come with a cost.

Keep developing your chidlren's minds, parents! Good things will result.

Captains Courageous takes the tried and true plot of the spoiled city child who is rescued through the magic of hard work and honest living. Harvey Cheyne Jr. is washed off a steamship and left for dead, but is instead rescued by fishermen who take him into their boat for the season.

This is, honestly, the first Kipling that I have ever read (aside from excerpts). His writing has been one of my larger gaps, and this seemed a good book with which to begin. The dialect is at times difficult, but did not really find it a barrier to understanding. I enjoyed the book. I particularly enjoyed the way the plot extended past Harvey's homecoming. Many books with a similar story end it after the rescue with no extension into the character's life. I also enjoyed the section with The Cheynes and their train ride.

A solid, entertaining sea yarn which seems likely to appeal to bookish young people. I may be damning the work with faint praise, but there you go.

p.s. If I started a band, I would call it Disko Troop.

This is still a great book for young readers (and old ones) who want to know what working life was really like for some in the eastern U.S. and Canada a hundred years ago. No picnic. The great thing is seeing it all in a gripping, often amazing, based-on-fact tale that centers on several teenaged boys who are part of a crew of a New England fishing boat. Death, mayhem, hardship, struggle, grim lessons, ultimate triumph in its strange way--all here along with a great portrait of poor men from all parts scraping to make a living on the sea. For what it tells about our history and the kinds of life our great-grandfathers led, this is Kipling's best, in my opinion.

When I started this book, I couldn't help but make some comparisons to Jack London's, Sea Wolf. The protagonist is picked up by a boat at sea and wants to be dropped off on shore, but the captain refuses and, instead, solicits his help on the ship's voyage, hoping to teach him something about real work along the way. And right about there the two novels diverge. While Jack London's, Sea Wolf goes through an increasingly complicated plot and conflict, Rudyard Kipling's, Captains Courageous simply lets us in on the cruise. Though they take two very different courses, I think that they both succeeded in their separate endeavors. Kipling relies on his description and scenes to set the story before us, and he achieves this masterfully. Describing life on board a fishing vessel could very easily turn out to be tedious, but Kipling uses such nice language and great characters that you almost feel as if you are there experiencing it with them, through the good and the bad. The ending is hardly surprising, but more importantly it feels right. One thing to note is that, while Kipling does describe things fairly well, this is still written back in the age of sail, so many of the terms are taken for granted for someone not well versed in that era. If that is the case, the reader might feel lost for a good portion of the story. Still, the writing is pleasant enough that you almost don't need to know what is going on, you're just happy to be along for the ride.