The Elephant

Peter Carnavas's The Elephant is a gentle, beautifully simple story for 7 year olds about a girl who can see her dad's sadness following him around.

What happens

Olive's dad has an elephant. A huge grey one, that nobody else can see. It sits beside him at breakfast, trudges off to work with him and lies down next to him at night, making everything heavy.

It's Olive's way of picturing the huge sadness he's carried for as long as she can remember. Her mum died when she was very small. Since then Dad mostly stares out of the kitchen window. He hasn't even fixed her bike, which used to be Mum's.

Luckily there's Grandad. He moved in to look after things and he fills Olive's days with colour. When he turns up at the school gate with his purple backpack, she knows an adventure's coming (paper planes on the cricket oval, a secret bird hiding in the treetops, an old song they sing all the way home).

Then everyone in her class has to bring in an old and wonderful thing for the school's hundredth birthday. Olive knows exactly what she wants to bring. That bike. And her best friend Arthur has a plan. Your dad won't fix your bike until you fix your dad. Get rid of the elephant!

This is such a tender little book. The sentences are short and lovely to read aloud, and the big feelings are shown through small things. A wallet on the fridge, a glass of water, a kiss on the head. That's Dad's whole routine when he gets home.

Arthur is the perfect best friend. He's a bit weird, he reads enormous books about frogs and elephants, and his squeeze box performance has half the class falling off their chairs (you'll see why).

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Grief and a parent's low mood are at the heart of this one. Olive's mum died when she was a baby, which is told as backstory, not as something that happens in the story. Olive also has a bad fall from a tree partway through and is knocked out.

For a child who's lost someone, or who lives with a parent who's struggling, it could be a comforting read to share together. For others it's simply a warm story about how much a grandad can mean.

What to read next

For another quiet story from Peter Carnavas, try My Brother Ben. Luke finds a hurt magpie on the road not long after his dad has left, and the bird he and his big brother nurse back to health starts his love of birds.