Elephant Booklist

As I continue adding to my booklists and trying to finish off all of the My Father’s World Kindergarten booklists (I’m only halfway through, though I’ve got vestigial versions for some), I got to an elephant booklist, and it was fun to look up different books. Also, when you’re trying to create an elephant booklist it’s fun to find a balance between fiction and nonfiction without getting too obscure.

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Fiction Elephant Booklist

As I was creating this elephant booklist I realized there are a few classic elephant series I could pick from, but unlike many favorite animals, there are not a lot of popular elephant characters.

But now to the fiction books.

• Can you move like an elephant?– this is only tangentially for elephants since it is concentrating on moving like lots of different animals, and the animals do not all come from the same area, but would be found in a zoo. It’s fun to challenge kids to move like animals. When creating a booklist for young kids finding a book that encourages movement and interaction is always good.
• Elmer– the first of the series books, and somehow as a young kid I never read Elmer, but it’s such a cute story of an elephant who is different because he is multi-colored and feels out of place.
• Babar– There are 47 books in this series, it’s not too realistic considering Babar and his family live in a house, wear clothes, and travel, but it’s a fun series.
• The Saggy Baggy Elephant– the Little Golden Book that we all know and love.
• The Elephant Child– This is not the version my library has, but it’s still Kilping’s tale of how the elephant got its’ long nose, and is a great story to read to kids.**
• Little Elephant’s Trunk– an adorable story of an elephant discovering how to use its trunk. It reminds me of babies discovering their feet.
• Cao Chong Weighs an Elephant– I LOVE books like this, there is so much you could do with this. First, just the adorable story is worth reading, and then there is the math and science portion figuring out buoyancy. Finally, Cao Chong is almost certainly a true historical figure (from the quick read at the back of the book there is disagreement about just how real things attributed to him are). You could make an entire week-long unit out of this book.
• How to Find an Elephant– the absolutely adorable story of a young boy looking all over to find an elephant on a cold gray day. It’s up to you to decide if he is going on this adventure or has a great imagination.
• Elephant’s Story– the story of a baby elephant and her life with the herd
• Pennies for Elephants– A true story of how the children from Boston raised money to get an elephant for the zoo.
• Zola’s Elephant– a new girl moves next door and her neighbor is sure she moved in with an elephant, a good story about being unsure of new people
• Home Now– Sieta is orphaned and is in her new home now and is sad, but one day she meets an orphan elephant that is in a new home now too.
• Little Elliott, Big City– after I shared this list, a friend recommended a nonfiction book (added to the nonfiction section) and the author of the nonfiction book recommended this book, so I added her recommended book in, it looks super cute

There’s our fiction books, now on to the…

** I have to admit I’m curious how they decide what books are nonfiction that are in the fairy tale vein, Hans Christian Anderson is put into the fairy tale section and so are Aesop’s Fables, but Just So Stories are not. Why?

Related to the Elephant Booklist

As I was typing up this list I realized I have a few posts that are related to this in one way or another.

• Zoo Animals
• Zoo animals preschool unit
• Elephants science lesson
• Afghanistan Unit (elephant ears dessert recipe)

Nonfiction Elephant Booklist

I had written this big long thing about having fairy tales and folklore in here, and then discovered the only unexpected book in here is Elephant Prince, about Ganesh, once I’d gotten through the big huge pile. While my library had several other nonfiction books about elephants I did not want to grab all of them.

• Elephant Prince– the story of how Ganesh was born and how he came to have an elephant head. It’s a nice simple retelling and has good illustrations.
• Great Migrations: Elephants– As it explains how elephants migrate, the book peppers in other facts and information about elephants. Good leveled reader for later 2nd-grade kids.
• Elephants can paint too– the true story of an elephant who paints with both kids and other elephants. Great photographs of the artwork and the kids working in the process.
• Elephants Swim– This is mostly a book about how different animals swim. If you’re doing a whole zoo unit get this book, but if you are focusing solely on elephants, skip it.
• She Leads– This was recommended to me by a friend after she read my list, and it looks amazing

And that’s my elephant booklist, I’ve got a printable version of this over on the subscriber portion if you JOIN MY NEWSLETTER.

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