Review - The Elephant's Umbrella

The Elephant's Umbrella
by Laleh Jaffari
illustrated by Ali Khodai
Date: 2017
Publisher: Tiny Owl Publishing Ltd.
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 24
Format: e-book
Source: NetGalley

The Elephant's Umbrella is a simple yet sophisticated tale about how generous we can be to others. The leopard and the bear think only of how the umbrella will make it nicer for them to hunt and eat, while the elephant wants to share the shelter the umbrella provides with his friends.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This doesn't really work for me. Although the book has appealing illustrations, the message is both heavy-handed and kind of problematic.

An elephant is very proud of his umbrella and wants to share it with all his friends, allowing them to shelter under it when it rains. But one day the wind blows the umbrella away from the elephant. A leopard finds it, but when the umbrella finds out that the leopard wants to eat other animals under it, it flies away on the wind. Then it's found by a bear, but when the umbrella finds out that the bear wants to eat honey under it, it flies away on the wind. Eventually, it ends up back with the elephant, who uses it to shelter his friends again.

I get that it's supposed to be about generosity, but for me, there was also a strange message about leopards and bears being bad simply for acting like leopards and bears. It's not like animals in the wild use umbrellas anyway, so making the elephant the good guy for acting like a human and the leopard and bear the bad guys for embracing their animal nature seems odd.

The writing isn't that strong. There are a number of punctuation errors. The pictures are very colourful and rather cute, but I'm not loving the story they accompany. It seems very short, too, and could've used another repetition of the "lost-and-found" theme; I'm used to seeing this sort of thing come in threes in picture books. Perhaps that's why I felt like the ending came rather abruptly, since the umbrella was only "found" twice before being returned to the elephant.

The elephant seems like a generous guy. But I question why all these animals need an umbrella in the first place.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tiny Owl Publishing Ltd. for providing a digital ARC.

Premise: 2/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.33 out of 5