Elephant's Life: An Intimate Portrait From Africa

by Caitlin O'Connell, Timothy Rodwell (Photographer)

The struggles and celebrations of nature's largest land creatures with more than 250 spectacular full-color photos by Caitlin O'Connell and Timothy Rodwell An Elephant's Life provides a unique and fascinating immersion into the world of the African elephant, told by a leading field biologist who has been researching and photographing these animals in their natural habitat for nearly two decades. Here, for the first time, readers get a fuller picture of elephant society cast in a broader context, including the life of the male elephant in all its high drama. Merging the visual traditions of photojournalism and the nature documentary with the narrative voice of such classics as Jane Goodall's Chimpanzees of Gombe, this large-format, full-color volume of photo essays provides a uniquely rich understanding of what it's like to grow up and live within the complexities of elephant society at every turn of the page. Readers will experience the frustrations and anguish of the coming-of-age male struggling to leave his family, witness the constant vigilance a matriarch exerts to protect her family, and feel the drama of a dominant male trying to hold onto power during times of peace and times of social upheaval. Like Wolf Empire (Lyons Press, 2007), An Elephant's Life is an intimate portrait of a beloved and fascinating species.

Genres: Nonfiction, Animals, Nature, Africa, Photography

208 pages, Hardcover

First published November 8, 2011

About the author

Dr. Caitlin O'Connell is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and a world renowned expert on elephants and vibrotactile sensitivity. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed nonfiction science memoir, The Elephant's Secret Sense (2007, Simon & Schuster--Free Press), which highlights a novel form of elephant communication as well as their conservation plight. Her narrative nonfiction photo book An Elephant's Life (2011, Lyons Press) uses a graphic novel approach to revealing subtle and intimate aspects of elephant society. Her co-authored nonfiction children's book, The Elephant Scientist (2011, Houghton Mifflin Children's Books) won five awards, including the Robert F. Sibert Honor and Horn Book Honor for 2012. A Baby Elephant In The Wild (2014, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers) was a Junior Library Guild Select and winner of the 2015 NSTA award for Outstanding Science Trade Book for students K-12. Her second science memoir, Elephant Don: The Politics Of A Pachyderm Posse (University of Chicago Press) came out in 2015. Her debut novel, Ivory Ghosts, also came out in 2015 with Alibi, an ebook imprint of Random House. The sequel to Ivory Ghosts, White Gold, came out in February, 2017 and the first issue of the comic came out in May, 2018. Bridge to the Wild was published in August, 2016 with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers. In her latest nonfiction book, Wild Rituals, 2020, O'Connell highlights the importance of ritual to all social animals including ourselves. O'Connell is the co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization, Utopia Scientific (www.utopiascientific.org), dedicated to research and science education. She is also co-director of Triple Helix Productions, with a mandate to develop more accurate and entertaining science content for the media. She has taught Science Writing for Stanford University and The New York Times Knowledge Network.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Caitlin O’Connell and her husband, Dr. Timothy Rodwell have spent more than twenty years studying elephant societies and behaviors at the Etosha National Park, Mushara waterhole in Namibia. Their work over this time period has been widely recognized as instrumental in understanding elephant behavior. Both O’Connell and Rodwell are considered to be world renowned experts on elephants.

Dr. O’Connell’s research has given her the opportunity to learn about vibrotactile sensitivity in elephants. With this acquired knowledge, she has been able to help people who have hearing impairments.

Together, the knowledge O’Connell and Rodwell have acquired has been shared with the scientific and medical community worldwide through papers and published articles. They are dedicated to research, conservation, and scientific education.

In this interesting book, O’Connell writes about the elephants and the behaviors she has observed. Her writing is accompanied by beautiful photographs which enhance the understanding of elephants.

Anyone interested in these magnificent, amazing animals would enjoy reading this relatively short, but informative book!

[Peacegal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow...stunning photos offer us a glimpse into the surprisingly human nature of African elephants. It's hard not to recognize some of our own behavior in these mighty animals.

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fun coffee table book I grabbed from the library when I had to leave my puzzle early. Fairly educationamoative, with some info about elephant behaviors. The overabundance of the variety of elephant names really sends home how much time and care the author spends devoted to the elephants and their behaviors. A good mix of photos and text. Mostly the spreads are designed with education in mind, ie, compare these 2 similar pictures, or, look at this behavior in the morning which led to this behavior at night. I felt sad reading about Greg's injury to his trunk causing much of the water to leak out of his trunk before he could drink it. I know it's wrong, and the whole point of the project is for observation, but I still couldn't help but feel like... Give him a patch! Give him a stitch! You can help him so help him!

I also enjoyed the other animals in the backgrounds of the pictures, and the stress O'Connell placed on providing size comparisons when possible -- look at this elephant next to a car, look at this elephant next to a sun-bathing lion, look at this elephant getting bullied by a bunch of lion cubs, etc. etc. etc.

Very fun!

[Aaron]

This book sort of blends picture book and chapter book formats, but for this purpose I will describe it as a picture book. This book takes the reader through the life of an African Elephant. It shows countless pictures and is very descriptive. The photography is beautiful, and gives an insight into the lives of elephants and their daily habits. This book surely explores every aspect of the lives of elephants, and goes into great detail to describe and picture all of it.

I liked this book, but it was long. Like, really long. Although most of the book is pictures and the text is very small, any book that stretches almost 200 pages is a lot of material. For that reason, I'm not sure how engaging it would be for kids, but it was definitely informational, and had a personal touch with the elephants.

I don't know that this would be the best for use in a classroom. Unless a student was researching the specific niche of African Elephants, I don't know that this would be the best book simply for its quantity. Most students are going to struggle to read all the way through, and it is not really a book that you can look through and pull specific information from. Nonetheless, I think it is a good book, and students would enjoy the photography and the personal stories of the elephants as opposed to a straightforward factual book.