Faithful Elephants

Faithful Elephants

Tsuchiya, Y. (1988). Faithful elephants: A true story of animals, people, and war. Boston, MA: Hougton Mifflin Company.

               

This realistic fiction picture book depicts the true story of a tragic incident during World War II in Japan.  The story is narrated by a zookeeper at the Ueno Zoo telling the tale as he remembers. He tells a tale of three elephants John, Tonky, and Wanly; who once lived at the Ueno Zoo.  His story explains the fears of the people and the zookeepers during the time of war.  They were afraid if the bombs that were falling over Japan might hit the zoo and the animals might be killed, injured, or worst of all released on the area townspeople.  To ensure this would not happen; the Army commanded the animals be poisoned to death.  The narrator tells of the unimaginable feat the zookeepers faced and the emotional toll it took on them.

Ted Lewin’s depicted the scenes of these tragic events through the medium of watercolor.  The color used throughout the book changed to portray the changing mood of the zookeepers and the unimaginable feat they were carrying out. He used soft warm colors at the beginning of the story to set the mood of contentment.  However the colors changed drastically as the story progressed to darker, less vibrant colors to depict the sorrow and remorse the zookeepers where feeling.

On several occasions the author used a literary device called onomatopoeia; the use of a word to depict a sound.  For example, the author says, “….but each time he brought a poisoned potato to his mouth with his trunk, he threw it to the ground, kerplunk!”  Each time he used this literary device the word is italicized to draw attention to the sound.  Students would easily be able to locate and identify examples of onomatopoeia in the text.  Students could be given opportunity to make some noise in their own writing by incorporating this literary device.