Elephants Books

This novel ties the main character Flaurent with the Rougon-Macquart family through marriage of his half brother. Flaurent is a runaway convict, who lives in his half brother's shop, which is a part of the big Parisian market. Flaurent is a former school teacher, who had had no interest in politics, but once, during the coup d'etat in December of 1851, while walking along the street came under police fire and had his hands smudged in dead woman's blood. That is how he got sentenced to hard labor. There is a sharp contrast between him and most of the other characters in the novel...

The novel is somewhat draggy at times and gossips with squabbles take up lots of passages, but one must bear in mind that in the Rougon-Macquart epic Zola was trying to create the broadest possible picture of the French society under Napoleon III. That is why, besides the Parisian market, the epic narrates about: big shops defeating small ones ("Au Bonheur des dames/Ladies Paradise"), miners ("Germinal"), the stock exchange ("Argent/Money"), etc.

Not Zola's best work by a long shot, but mostly a good read. The many pages of description, though typical of the era and of Zola's late style, end up feeling overindulgent. I read this book in small portions, and found myself frequently bored and even agrieved by the endless word-pictures of mountains of produce and hoards of marketers. It felt as though I'd hired Zola as a guide to Les Halles only to find him pesky and insistant, always tapping me on the shoulder and urging me to look at all the colors and smell all the odors and hear all the babble. The story ended up more interesting as a period piece than as literature. But it's entertaining and worth the effort.

But I owe no thanks to the editors. This edition as so full of typos, misprints, and other errors, sometimes more than one per page, that I have to question whether the translation itself is scholarly. A greater work might have sent me to the French to double check the translation, but this book just isn't worth the effort.

If you're considering where to start with Zola, look first to L'Assommoir or Therese Raquin. They are more rewarding.

Zola is a great author and any of his stuff is worth reading. This book breaks new ground in its portrayal of the lives of the "little people" of Paris, its detailed descriptions of food and, most of all, its use of a city district - rather than human beings - as its main character. Zola himself had great affection for it. You feel his nostalgia for his difficult early days in the capital. But ultimately the book doesn't quite gell. The famous descriptions, while being jewels in themselves, actually get in the way of the action. The plot could have been more sharply focused and, perhaps the most curious thing of all, the main human character, Florent, is only a member by marriage of the Rougon-Macquart family which the cycle of novels is about. The "real" member of the family, Lisa, has a remarkably peripheral role. Also, the book could have been made a lot shorter. But it is still rewarding for the reader because, after dealing with provincial intrigue and the capital's fat cats in his first two novels, Zola takes his first stab at portraying the people that were ultimately to make his reputation: the "lower orders".

The plot for the "Belly" is excellent for those who appreciate Zola's subtle twists of fates and corruptible society. Many books by Zola have been amply translated with little lost of the style incorporated by Zola. However, in painting the markets of Paris, Zola incorporates a style similar to literary landscaping utilized by James F. Cooper (highly detailed). The translation does not flow as an artist brush on a canvas, it becomes tedious at times leaving me to skim over rather quickly, which is rare. Overall, it was worth reading, but not worth going to pains to get to it.

This novel, the third in the Rougon-Macquart series, is a great example of what Zola does best. Through his minute attention to descriptive detail, he creates a setting based on historical fact, peoples it with an ensemble cast of realistic characters, and before we know it we are entangled in their lives as if we were one of the neighborhood. In this case the neighborhood is Les Halles, the huge marketplace of Paris, and the cast is composed of fish mongers, butchers, bakers, vegetable sellers, and street urchins. The two main characters are Lisa Quenu (born Lisa Macquart, daughter of Antoine Macquart), and her brother-in-law Florent. Florent, a Republican who's had some trouble with the law, seems to be an embodiment of Zola's feelings toward the revolutionary movement of the time, both positive and negative. Lisa, who runs a butcher shop with her husband, represents the moderate French citizen of the era, far more interested in the comforts and challenges of everyday life than in the events of the world outside her own immediate surroundings. While Florent entertains grandiose Utopian visions of a socialist France, politics is the last thing on Lisa's mind. Her main concern is keeping up the appearance of relative prosperity, thereby winning her family a bit of social status within the neighborhood.
Depending on which edition you read, this book is either titled The Belly of Paris or The Fat and the Thin. The second title refers to two types of people in the world. On the most obvious level it could simply refer to the division between the Haves and the Have-Nots. But Zola explores the dichotomy on a deeper level, separating mankind into those who are concerned foremost with creating a comfortable life for themselves, preoccupied only by the immediate world around them (The Fat) and those who have an outward concern toward the world, life, and humanity as a whole, living a life of sacrifice--whether deliberate or not--because of a devotion to a higher cause, whether it be political conviction, art, or some other calling (The Thin). Zola doesn't pick sides, but rather points out the strengths and foibles of both types. This novel is not a masterpiece, and it won't have the kind of profound effect on you as some of Zola's better books (Germinal, La Terre, L'Assomoir). It is an engaging read, however, and can certainly stand as a worthy sidekick alongside Zola's greatest works.

We recieved this book and my daughter who is 10 months old, loved the pictures and the colorful animals. BUT, We the parents were not happy about the translation, it was poorly translated and as we speak arabic at home and speak arabic to our children we would have liked and expected the book to be translated properly.

Elmer's Friends was the first book my daughter (1.5 years) took an interactive interest in. She loves the lion. She roars whenever she sees it and it is the first animal sound she has made.

This was the book I bought the first time I took my daughter to the zoo. This is where she really learned to wave "bye bye" and "hello" and practice her animal sounds. She enjoyed roaring like a lion and hooting like the owl. But I enjoyed the message the most: "Elmer's friends are all different, but they all love Elmer." A subtle message, but an important one to learn.

We picked up a copy of Elmer's Friends from the library as part of a stack of books to read to our two year old. She fell in love with it. So much so that we bought a copy. She loves the different animals, and is learning their names. She particularly likes the the lion.

Whenever she sees it, she ROARS out loud, and makes us roar too.

This is the best kind of children's book. One they ask to have read to them over and over.

This is great! Lots of fun to be able to read the story in English, then it is translated into Italian in the next line, on the same page!

I am a teacher. I love teaching. I teach in a tough public school, and my favorite students are the "difficult" ones. I train teachers how to be better teachers because that is how much I love teaching. And I have to say, I hated this book. It was one incredibly long cliche--a story that has been told countless times before, and always better than this. It is poorly written (which is probably why it was not published by any major publishing company and why the reviews on the back are written by people no one has ever heard of.) It is full of mixed metaphors and simplistic maxims on life. I am not sure Bill (or William) McBride has a real understanding of students, teachers, or janitors--as none of his characters seemed even slightly believable. This book has a lot of syrupy sweetness, but nothing substantial enough to really offer teachers hope or inspiration for long.

Bill McBride takes a tired out teacher and shows how everyone can learn new things. The book is popular with teachers...and for good reason. It helps them see how there is always the possibility of renewal and transformation. The search for the title reference is worth the whole reading and it makes perfect sense. Especially now, as the end of the year begins to roll down, teachers will relate to the situation! Buy it now.

One of my all-time favorite teacher books is Bill McBride's Entertaining an Elephant: a novel about learning and letting go. The dedication is to those who have chosen to teach love rather than fear. McBride's heartwarming story is about a teacher who resisted change, clung to the grammar drill and kill and had trouble dealing with students. The janitor shows him a better way to relate to kids, people in general. "The future will depend on what we do in the present." Gandhi As we struggle with new strategies, reform movements, and the demand to change the way we are as teachers, this book can soften our hearts, relieve our stress, lessen our fears, and give us hope for the future.

I had high hopes for this book after hearing its praises sung by my grad school prof and reading the reveiws on the back of the book. I was truly disappointed. By page 20, I could predict what was going to happen because it is the same tired book about teaching that has been written hundreds of times before. Just another example of the assault on teachers--everyone knows more about teaching and kids than the teacher! A sentimental piece not worth the time or effort.

This a great book for those veteran teachers who have been teaching longer than I have been alive. I have a college profesor who uses this term "teachers who have taught one year thirty times" to make some comments on teaching. I feel that this book is a great example of that term. Those teachers that he is talking about should get a hold on this book.

I came to Ahmed's Revenge quite prepared to love this book; I admire Wiley's choice of settings and subjects for his books and a review whet my appetite. The beginning is most promising; the story reads as if Wiley worked pretty hard on getting the first 40 or 50 pages right. Then it is like he ran out of time or interest and rushed through the rest. The bulk of the book reads too much, for a writer of Wiley's ability and pedigree, like a first draft. There are loose ends and dead ends and repeated ideas and wooden stage directions. People's reactions don't ring true. The narrator is breathless and racing about but despite her protestations I do not buy that she is a grieving recent widow, I don't buy the emotions she says she's feeling. Some interesting characters crop up and there are some nice passages but it is very uneven. The sudden (and very convenient) friendship that develops with the opera singer is particularly unconvincing and inorganic to the story. The follow through on the mystery is a bit weak. The sheer story telling is not at all sure or strong. Again, much of seems like first draft material that should have been revised if not dropped. I am sorry to find this book to be so thin.

This clumsy novel reads like a rough draft that a good editor should have polished and tightened. The detective/narrator, Nora, is a buffoon who constantly hampers the mystery she is allegedly solving. The suspense never works. Why would Nora, hot on the trail of a bad guy, interrupt to tell him she's running late, just when he's trying to let her in on a clue? (When she's finally ready to hear, he won't tell.) This book teeters between the conventions of a mystery and the conventions of a novel desperately seeking a deeper meaning. It succeeds on neither level. For a marvelous Kenya setting read Francesca Marciano's "Rules of the Wild" or even go back to Karen Blixen's "Out of Africa." For authentically-menacing African politics read Nadine Gordimer or V. S. Naipaul. The only people who should read this turkey are those who want to use it as a textbook for Creative Writing 101: How Not to Write.

Richard Wiley's novel about a young British widow caught in Kenya's illegal ivory trade is beautifully rendered. His fifth novel, Wiley's hallmarks of unusually graceful prose and a narrative style driven by eccentric characters from different parts of the world who are drawn together by mutual dependence and everyday happenstance are gloriously present in this tale of intrigue and cultural collision. Nora Grant is a lifelong British resident of Kenya in her early thirties, living on and running a coffee farm with her husband, Jules. She is shocked to discover his involvement in the illegal trade of elephant tusks. But before she summons the will to confront him, Jules is severely injured in a shooting accident. When he dies mysteriously while in hospital, Nora resolves to get to the root of his illicit legacy. She does so with the aid of her increasingly senile father; her father's best friend, an elderly and detached physician; a down-at-the-heels city detective, dedicated and insightful, yet curiously incapable of a normal conversational greeting ("Jambo Mama and Daddy."); and a beautiful African opera singer preparing for her role in Madame Butterfly. The story line is filled with unexpected turns taken by flawed heroes and not-so-evil villains, colorfully fleshed out by this one-time expatriate author, who lived and worked in Kenya, as well as several other countries. Through it all is the lakewater clear quality of Wiley's prose, exempified in passages like this one, as Nora reflects on the nature of her relationship with Jules. "...it was nevertheless I who fell in love first and hardest, I who most clearly heard that inner whisper telling me that Jules was the one. I believe now that Jules loved me during his life, ...but he loved the idea of Africa, the idea of high savannah, of elephants on the open range, at least as well."

Wiley escapes limited genre assignments with this novel which embraces so many themes. It is entertaining and surprisingly humorous in areas; it touches on class,race,and gender issues. His success is in crafting an intricate and engaging story which races the audience through political and social commentary that is subtle, and so more effective. The language is often beautiful and the backdrop is sensual. This is literature that offers a counter-history in the form of a personal memoir. I loved it; I read it in one day.

Richard Wiley's "Ahmed's Revenge" is a curiously interesting book. I have liked all of Wiley's novels; this one is the most puzzling. We are dealing with situations and characters that are unfamiliar that Wiley has rendered as both familiar and exotic. I read this one with my forehead furrowed, trying to work out all the problems and complications it occasioned in my weary brain. The quiet tone and unexpected imagery has a bit of a pleasant hypnotic effect. It's a curious book, and you ought to look at it yourself and add a book review of your responses so I can read them too. My primary suggestion for the author is to add more elephants. And more digging.

This book is delightfully funny, both with the text and the pictures. The mother is described at one point by the baby as having wobbly bits. The only down side with this book is that it sort of sends a mixed message regarding weight. They do all the right things and don't lose weight. The Fats end up deciding elephants are meant to be fat. Confusing. Overall though, the story and the pictures make up for this mixed message.

I was studying Jill murphy for an English project - she is a very skilled writer and i remember the books myself from a young age - re reading it I couldn't help but smile, its a classic childrens tale one i would recomend to anyone, parent and big-kid alike.

When Mama Elephant put the family on a diet, their will power remains strong until Grammy sends a cake. With the jogging before breakfast and the jogging after school there isn't much time to think about food, the Elephant family is sure to lose weight, right? Wrong! Maybe Elephants are meant to be fat! The illustrations are very good. Each has terrific deatail and facial expression. A warning is due for this book however because of the focus on weight loss. I'm not so sure the book goes about the issue as sensitively as it should. The first words of the text are "I'm Fat." Although Mama stresses the Elephant family should "get fit," not lose weight, the focus is still on being fat. Knowing the damage being called fat can cause, this book should be read in an educated manner if you choose to read it to your child. After reading it, try to have a short discussion of the healthy foods the Elephant family could eat instead of cake.

An excellent book, both for reading to children and for new readers to read themselves. The antics of the Large Family will have you in stitches!

When Mama Elephant put the family on a diet, their will power remains strong until Grammy sends a cake. With the jogging before breakfast and the jogging after school there isn't much time to think about food, the Elephant family is sure to lose weight, right? Wrong! Maybe Elephants are meant to be fat! The illustrations are very good. Each has terrific deatail and facial expression. A warning is due for this book however because of the focus on weight loss. I'm not so sure the book goes about the issue as sensitively as it should. The first words of the text are "I'm Fat." Although Mama stresses the Elephant family should "get fit," not lose weight, the focus is still on being fat. Knowing the damage being called fat can cause, this book should be read in an educated manner if you choose to read it to your child. After reading it, try to have a short discussion of the healthy foods the Elephant family could eat instead of cake.

This is a sweet little book with wonderful photos of these elephants "71" and Mara growing up and finding contentment at PAWS in galt CA. The photos are so touching. It's more of a picture book...a documentary told in beautiful black and white photos...I loved it! the photos alone are worth the price!

In defense of this book, I am compelled to support the spirit of its purpose. Yes it is published by people with captive elephants, but the elephants in this book are now as free as they can be, at the home of PAWS, (Performing Animal Welfare Society) where "abandoned or abused performing animals and victims of the exotic animal trade can live in peace and contentment." They may be visited in person at their Galt, California sanctuary. Kudos to an organization that does not glorify the human entertainment of training wild animals to perform unnatural acts.

This is a book full of pictures of elephants, NOT a Peter S. Beagle book. He wrote a few paragraphs of an introduction, nothing else. In terms of the rest of the book, it is bland and hypocritical; the authors bemoan the fact of captive elephants, while keeping captive elephants. The pictures are poor quality as well.

The photographs are stunning and the message clear and compelling. To the person who reviewed this and called Pat Derby and Ed Stewart hypocrits, you really missed the point. They have provided an amazing sanctuary for these animals and others. They do not promote keeping animals in capitivity, they simply are caring for those that are unfortunetly, already captive. They are providing a wonderful place for them to iive out their lives with the hopes that there will not be a need in the future to provide sanctuary for any others, though sadly, that seems to be only a dream.

I had this book when I was a kid. Now my son is 4 and telling bad jokes of his own. The jokes in this book make a little more sense than the ones my son is making up, but they are all in about the same spirit.

I do have fond memories of reading the book and telling the jokes. I am sure my parents might have rethought the book at times, considering how I would tell the jokes for hours and hours.

So, ok, the jokes are lame; but almost magical for a young kid.

101 Elephant Jokes:

You know how sometimes people tell jokes that have no real punchline, but sometimes are told because they are amusing in a stupid sort of way?

Here is an example:

How do you know that an elephant has been in the refrigerator?
Because you can see it's footprint in the butter!

Hahaha. Whattakneeslapper. Actually, that joke was told in such a way in that classic show "All in the Family". Archie Bunker was laughing at that stupid joke, but others weren't because it obviously was lame.

Well. That very same joke is in this masterwork of sharp humor, "101 Elephant Jokes."

What are some other samples in this volume?

What is gray and lights up?
An Electric Elephant!

Why do elephants have short tails?
So they won't get them caught in subway doors!

When you buy elephants, what should you check for first?
The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval!

Yeah, I'm just rolling on the floor. The back cover of this volume boasts that it is "The funniest collection of roars and chuckles I've ever read- the best of elephant jokes for giant-sized laughs!" Uhhhh..........that's not quite accurate.

The book was originally published in 1964. In the book's introduction, William Dow Boutwell, who at the time was the Editorial Vice President of Scholastic Book Services, describes an encounter with a Mr. Robert Blake, who at the time was a student at Memorial Junior High School, in Fairlawn, NJ. So this kid, Robert Blake, gives him these elephant jokes, and Mr. Boutwell says that he laughed, and other editors he showed them to, laughed as well. Uhh........were they laughing for the reasons that I suspected?

By enlarge, the book is funny because it isn't funny. Kind of like the way that Fozzie Bear on the "Muppet Show" would try stand up comedy, but his jokes would fall flat, the two old guys in the balcony would pick on him, and the audience would boo him.....And you would laugh at the situation, and find Fozzie Bear to be funny, in a sense, because he wasn't funny when he was trying to be.

To be fair, there are a few in the book that aren't as bad (or at least have valid punchlines):

How do you stop elephants from charging?
Take away their credit cards!

Why did the elephant and the donkey fight?
It was an election year!

Why can't elephants hitchhike?
They don't have thumbs!

Yet most of them are pretty lame.

This book is essentially like those books that you would find in elementary school libraries, the ones where you see a big laughing face, but when you look inside, many of the jokes are simplistic and forced, and funny because they are not.

If Mr. Robert Blake is still among the living today, I hope he has figured this out by now.

Let's face it, elephant jokes are stupid. If you like stupid jokes, or telling stupid jokes, then this book is for you. I find stupid jokes particularly useful when telling them to people who think I have a functioning brain. They expect clever witicisms, and I give them elephant jokes. This makes them laugh. I wish I understood it.

One example from my memory, so forgive me if I get it slightly wrong: What's grey and stamps out forest fires? Smokey the Elephant.

I've owned this book since about 1973, when I was around 8. That's a good age for elephant jokes.

I still have about a dozen memorized, and I trot them out sometimes when the occasion seems to merit them. Buy the book and your friends will laugh while wondering at your sanity.

My granddaughter and I first saw this book at a local yoga studio. She is familiar with Babar and his exploits, and has done yoga with me for a few years, so she was tickled when she saw "Babar's Yoga" and began to read several noteworthy quotes to me, including the revelation that elephants had in fact invented yoga! She was so charmed by the book, she put it at the top of her Christmas list, and was delighted to find it under the tree. The book does provide accurate yoga information, actual poses illustrated by elephants, and a sense of the yogic purpose. It'a a fun introduction to yoga.

In my opinion, this book is much more difficult than it's presentation. I take yoga and pilates and feel the instructions are not that easy to follow. The poses are too advanced for children ages 4 and under.

Written in good humor for adults and children. I got it for my grandchildren and they like it. Babar talks to people as though they were visitors from another country, who need to be told about the wonderful things in his world. Yoga is one of those wonderful things.

This book is not especially unique and is a melange of several genres but it is contains some interesting vantages, including a great deal that may be based on real life colonial situations in Sri Lanka as the author admits. It is in this respect a rare overview of a vanished colonial past with only remnants today to vindicate former prestige. As someone who has lived in tea estates in Sri Lanka during vacations, I can testify to their beauty and how much more lavish things could have been when their founding masters were on their thrones.

Following hot on the heels of Rebecca released in 1938, the book seems to incorporate several elements in it. The main character in Rebecca is passively swept away by a husband with a fabulous mansion which happens to have a rather haughty and overbearing housekeeper. In Elephant walk the female protagonist actively pursues the rich planter in a manipulative courtship which by far is one of the most interesting phases of the book in the beginning. She enters a strange oversized mansion in Sri Lanka with a degree of profligacy as in Rebecca in the diversity of its overspend having to face a haughty house keeper zealously attached to maintaining tradition. As in Rebecca, the mansion is destroyed at the end.

During colonial times the phenomenon of the bored housewife while the husband went to work was well known and has been fictionally documented by Kipling, Forster (perhaps) and factually in such books as the Fall of the British Empire by C. Cross. This book makes a great play on this phenomenon bringing in an affair with the assistant planter who is tragically separated from the heroin by the Great War.

The interest in the book following the opening courtship lies chiefly in highlighting elements of colonial life that have not really been documented such as how the planters lived, held meetings, their food, drinks, amusements and about the imported coolies from South India. It also describes how such plantations were carved out of pristine wilderness, now hanging on to existence by the skin of its teeth, thanks to such colonial encroachments and their ramifications. Almost all montane elephants in Sri Lanka have since been displaced.

The love story in the book is quite weak and the structure of the plot is not especially sophisticated or well woven. But the author has put in a lot of effort which shows and this book makes a good read.

The book was after all turned into a film with Liz Taylor which probably made it into a best seller at the time and it is probably better than the film.

All in all Elephant Walk is an often sensitive portrayal of heavy memories and facts that one can usually only imagine rather than recreate. It represents the impact and opulence of lifestyles in aspects of Bristish colonialism before the 1950's in Sri Lanka from a contemporary source.

My own opinion of the book is that sometimes it is quite interesting, but at times also boring.The book is good at describing a realistic story with no happy ending. In it really unfair things happen which makes the reader angry. But you should read it for yourself.

Kathrin Arndt E8/I

It is about a 2 men trying to maintain a coffe bean facility in Africa. Then they fall in love, and half some complications.

Thats basicaly it.

You don't have to 'judge' a person's life to read about it. This book is an excellent window into a time and place. The many photographs add greatly to what is essentially an unvarnished memoir of a circus elephant trainer.

This nasty book is filled with black and white photos of elegant elephants in captivity. Large chains, etc. First edition. The circus guy who wrote it is proud he handled rogue elephants. See "Ziggy's" last photo. See "Ziggy" unable to get to his feet underneath hoisted to an upright position. See "Ziggy" in shock with right trunk broken off. "He had lashed across the moat at a keeper standing where the six men are looking down at him." See "Black Diamond encased in chains, "taking his last walk". See "Tusko": " He had grown to full size and temper. No elephant had wore as many chains in order to be exhibited, as he was here on the AI G. Barnes show..." (an esp. pitiful photo). And on and on. This hardcover, unusual book is in pretty good cond. Some water stains on the outside pages. The jacket is in bad shape. This book is disgusting if you have any moral values about animals in captivity. The guy who wrote it apparently did not.. 20 % of proceeds will be donated to animal anti-cruely non-profit organization. Buyer Beware. Depressing.

"Slim" Lewis loved the "bad boys" of the zoo and circus: the elephants that no one else could handle, the most dangerous and unpredicatable creatures in captivity. Elephants are uncanny animals, sometimes gentle and compassionate, sometimes dangerous and cunning; very like humans in ways good AND bad. Circus life can be brutal to humans and non-humans alike. But even so, most animal handlers like Mr. Lewis truly cared for (yes, loved) their charges (hence the decision to work with them in the first place). As a former zoo keeper myself, and having worked with Asian Elephants in a limited capacity, I find this book refreshingly honest and insightful. My (ex) husband (and former zoo keeper as well) had met Mr. Lewis at a zoo keepers conference and had his treasured copy of this book signed by him. What a piece of history this book is! You will be drawn instantly into a captivating auto-biographical memoir full of nostalgia, lore, Americana, and adventure. Parts will amuse you, parts will shock you, and parts will make you cry. This is REAL experience from a pro elephant trainer. His perspectives are often brutally honest and heartfelt. His love of Elephants is undeniable. Even if you have no interest in the circus or in elephants, the wealth of history here makes compelling reading. The photos alone are priceless. My hope is that this book (an enhanced and expanded version of the earlier "Elephant Tramp") will be published again and remain in print for years to come. You will want to share this book with your friends. In fact, I have just ordered my own copy to replace the one I left behind.