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Illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy
Clarion Books, 2011
$16.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages
You may be fond of elephants, but after reading this beguiling book of poetry, you'll wish you could save every one.
Zimmer's words and Halsey and Addy's pictures bring elephants into greater focus and heighten our respect for them, in a whimsical, if at times sobering tribute to the world's largest land mammal.
Every two-page spread combines meticulously worded poems and soft, winsome collages, along with torn-edged notes expounding upon the topic of a poem.
In one spread, the profile of a sweet-eyed elephant spans the fold of two pages, its appendages painted to resemble objects they're similar to.
Ears look like "tattered sails," the tail swishes like a "tapered rope" with a "fancy tassel," a sturdy hind leg becomes a Grecian pillar and another is inset with a slipper to suggest lightness of foot.
Though Zimmer never comes out and appeals for help saving elephants, she deepens our understanding of these sapient creatures and asks us to contemplate how humans affect their lives.
In doing so, she skillfully involves us in their plight and makes us feel protective of them.
The title poem, also the first in the book, shows elephants as proud creatures and hints that elephants in their service to humans, though dutiful, yearn to be set free.
Set over a sky of flying elephants, the poem describes a mythical time when elephants had wings and ruled the sky, then fell from grace for thinking themselves too great.
One day a prophet came to share with elephants all that he knew. But as they flew into an elm to listen, the elephants began quarreling over who had a better view of the prophet, and as they jostled around, the tree splintered and crashed to the ground.
The prophet, the only creature on the ground not crushed, was so enraged and disillusioned by their behavior, that he invoked a curse
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