Elephant in My Kitchen!

Description

Elephant in My Kitchen!

Smriti Halls and Ella Okstad

(Egmont)

Can you believe it? An Elephant in My Kitchen! ? What’s more, there’s a gorilla in the bedroom, pulling out the toys and a panda playing badminton, and an orang-utan brushing with toothpaste in his ear!
Where have all these animals arrived from? They’re filling up every room in the house! Then again, it seems like they’re eating all the food, from ice cream, popcorn, cake and banana0 chocolate shakes!

It seems as though all these animals are displaced because they’ve nowhere to live. For example there’s ‘hardly any fish to eat,/ And hardly any ice.‘ Then, ‘the trees keep getting chopped away/ There’s RUBBISH in their bed.‘ So, what choice is there?

Ella Okstad, illustrator of Sophie Johnson Detective Genius amongst other titles, offers bright, urgent pictures that highlight the drama. Meanwhile Smriti Halls’ rhyming text is imaginative, funny and exciting. What will happen? What do we have to do with this situation? For, while the message is there, we are drawn in through a vibrantly wild situation, rather like Lily and the Polar Bears. Therefore, it is impactful and understood. Elephant in My Kitchen! is an engrossing, necessary picture book.