How did elephants get their trunks? This imaginative tale offers up a most fantastical answer
“Hippopotamus!” little elephant called. “Yes, little elephant, what can I do for you?” “Excuse me, please, but could you tell me what the crocodile eats for dinner?”
Here is a story that takes place a long time ago, before elephants had trunks for noses . . . One day a very special elephant comes along—an unusually curious elephant—and she has an important question that she needs answered. Little does she know her question will lead to an amazing discovery.
This vibrant retelling of one of Rudyard Kipling’s beloved Just-So Stories is sure to be appreciated and enjoyed by young children. And don’t miss the fantastic gatefold where little elephant’s nose gets stretched from bump to trunk!
A curious little elephant wants to know what crocodile eat for dinner, and in his quest for the answer he ventures upon a few new friends. In the end, he gets a little bit more then he bargained for when the crocodile is answering his question.
The pictures in this book were stunning. It says that the illustrator used printing ink, rollers, and stencils on paper to create the effects throughout the story. A lot of black was used so that the bright colors would pop off of the pages. The animals were colorful and friendly, even the crocodile was brightly colored so he did not seem scary, even though at one point in the story he was trying to eat the baby elephant.
An element of this story that I also really enjoyed was how polite all of the animals were to each other. All of them are different in their own special way, but they all knew how to use their manners. This would be a good book to go over manners with the students. It would also be a good book to look at habitats of the different animals; the crocodile is in the river, the monkeys are in the trees, and the lion is in the bushes. This was a great book!
Notes: my kids gave this a zero star rating because once you've read Kipling, absolutely nothing else compares; the illustrations overwhelm the imaginative point of these sorts of stories; this is a dumbed-down version of the real thing