The Saggy Baggy Elephant

Kathryn and Byron Jackson's The Saggy Baggy Elephant is a jungle story for 5 year olds about a little elephant who gets told he's completely the wrong shape.

What happens

Sooki is dancing through the jungle. One-two-three-kick. He thinks he's doing it beautifully and he isn't entirely wrong, except that his feet shake the whole jungle on the one-two-three, and he knocks over a tree or a bush on every kick.

Then he meets a parrot who has never seen an elephant before in his life (he says so himself). That doesn't stop the parrot having opinions. Your ears are too big. Your nose is far too big. And your skin is much, MUCH too big, all baggy and saggy, so that's what you ought to call yourself.

Poor Sooki. He'd be glad to improve himself, he says. He just has no idea how to go about it.

What follows is a small elephant trying every bit of advice he's offered. He rubs his skin with his trunk to smooth it. He tugs at the wrinkles and they drop straight back into place. A tiger tells him it's all down to exercise, then kindly offers to nibble a few of the extra pounds off for him, which gets Sooki running very fast indeed. He soaks in the river the way a crocodile does, until an actual crocodile swims up and looks thoughtfully at his ears.

So he hides in a dark cave where his bags and sags and creases and wrinkles can't be seen. And that's where a very hungry lion finds him.

It's a short one. Five minutes, if nobody interrupts. The pleasure is all in the rhythm, that one-two-three-kick you'll both be saying hours later, and in the lovely pile-up of words for how wrinkly one elephant can be.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

It's quick and silly rather than frightening, and no threat lasts more than a line or two. But if your reader gets stuck on the idea of an animal being eaten, the lion listing everything he's had today may be one to read together.

It's an American book and it shows once, when Sooki pulls up his pants legs.

What to read next

If the mix of a big soft animal and a gentle joke goes down well, Tawny Scrawny Lion is in the library too. Same sort of story, same daft warmth, and a lion so permanently starving that the other animals send one small rabbit off to reason with him.