The Elephant's Child
Author: Rudyard Kipling Illustrator: Emily Bolam Publisher: Dutton Children's Books, 1992
Where to Find It: Buy Here: The Elephant's Child on Amazon.in Read Online: Internet Archive
Best For: Ages 3 and above. May need to be read aloud to younger children.
The Tale in a Nutshell
What happens when you just cannot stop asking questions? When curiosity is so alive in you that no amount of scolding, shushing, or spanking can put it out? The Elephant's Child is a story that celebrates exactly this — that irrepressible, unstoppable, magnificent need to know. And it turns out, curiosity doesn't just get you into trouble. Sometimes, it changes everything.
Why This Book Shines
This is one of Kipling's beloved Just So Stories — those glorious, playful tales that explain how things in the natural world came to be. This one answers a question children have probably never thought to ask: how did the elephant get its trunk?
The hero is a young elephant brimming with what Kipling delightfully calls 'satiable curiosity — insatiable curiosity — and he asks questions about everything and everyone. The Giraffe, the Lion, the Hippopotamus — each one responds not with an answer but with a spanking. And still he keeps asking.
His most daring question — what does the Crocodile have for dinner? — sends him on a journey to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River. There, the Crocodile answers him not with words but with teeth, grabbing him by his little nose and pulling. And pulling. And pulling. Until what was once a small, bulgy nose becomes something altogether magnificent and useful — a trunk.
The story is told in Kipling's wonderfully theatrical voice, warm and conspiratorial, addressing the reader directly as O Best Beloved. It is a story made for reading aloud, with its rolling repetitions and delicious, absurd logic. The ending is quietly triumphant — the child who was punished for his curiosity returns home transformed, and his transformation transforms everyone else too.
Artful Notes
Emily Bolam's illustrations are bold, joyful, and unapologetically childlike — painted with the confident, loose energy of someone who understands exactly what young eyes love to look at.
The colour palette is vivid and celebratory — electric greens, burnt oranges, deep teals, and bright reds fill every page with tropical warmth and life. The landscapes feel alive and slightly surreal, with swirling patterned hillsides and trees that look as though they've been painted by a very happy child with a very big brush.
The animals are rendered with real character — the Crocodile is sly and low-slung in murky water, the Lion gloriously maned and grumpy, the Hippopotamus a magnificent shade of blue. The Elephant's Child himself is endearing throughout, round and grey and expressive, his changing nose a visual anchor for the whole story.
The endpapers — a repeating pattern of orange and green elephants marching across a dark teal background — are a delight in themselves, and frame the story beautifully.
Bolam's art doesn't try to be realistic. It tries to be joyful. And it succeeds completely.
Little Extras
This story carries a quiet but powerful message — that curiosity, even when it gets you into trouble, is worth protecting. The Elephant's Child is not rewarded despite his questioning nature. He is rewarded because of it.
It is also a wonderful read for drama classrooms — the repetition, the direct address, the comic timing, and the theatrical escalation of the tug-of-war scene make it a natural for performance and storytelling.
Good to use in the PSE Library and Drama classroom!
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