The Family Bookshelf
By Bob Walch

"The Big Elephant in the Room"
(Disney Hyperion) by Lane Smith 

The Audience: For children ages 3 through 7.

The Issue: This book is all about what can happen when you misunderstand what some one is saying.

The Content: "Can we talk about the big elephant in the room?" asks one of the two donkeys featured in this picture book.

“ ‘The big elephant?’ As in ‘the BIG problem?’  I was expecting this," replies the other donkey.

Now, the donkey goes down a list of things he has done that might have hurt his friend's feelings. From not sharing crunchy-nut ice cream or forgetting to return a video game to telling people he laughed so hard that he peed his pants, the litany is a long one that shocks the donkey's buddy.

Continuing, the guilty donkey thinks the big elephant "thing" might be his burping in the cafeteria or perhaps picking his friend last when they selected teams for baseball. Or maybe it was making fun of the other donkey's Rainbow Pony backpack.

Nope, that's not it! The question actually concerns the big, the very big, elephant sitting in the corner of the room. Oops! There's been a big, a very big, misunderstanding here!  Now guess who has to do some damage control? 

The Message: A silly story about a simple verbal misunderstanding, this amusing book features equally funny illustrations that show quite graphically just how badly one of the donkeys sticks his foot in his big mouth!

Before retiring, Bob Walch taught English in Santa Barbara and Carmel for 39 years. His reviews of children's literature appear in Central Coast newspapers and on line at the Reading Tub, Roundtable Reviews, My Shelf and Parent Click.