Award-winning creators Dee White (whose numerous titles include the bestselling junior-fiction Eddy Popcorn series) and Christopher Nielsen (whose picture book Just One Bee won a 2022 CBCA Honour Book Award) have teamed up to create a rollicking, fact-filled adventure about the many uses for elephant poo.
The story is narrated by a child determined to convince readers that elephants should be thanked for giving their useful poo to the world. His hilarious demonstrations (often accompanied by his sister) of how elephant poo can be used see the children soaring in poo-powered tuk tuks and fertilising the garden with ‘ploppy plant fibre.’ There are even some considerations around practicality for readers eager to imitate: ‘‘If you don’t have room for an elephant loo, somewhere that’s big enough for all of that poo, you might have to send it away in a truck to people who love heaps of elephant muck.”
Nielsen’s illustrations are vibrant, expressive, and extremely appealing for a young audience. The gorgeous endpapers also include a fun dice game, where players attempt to be the first to deliver the poo to the truck (with clever reminders of many poo facts from the story along the way).
I was slightly disappointed, after learning that elephant poo could be turned into paper, that this book wasn’t made with paper crafted from poo. However, with deft meter and unforced rhyme, this story is a joyful read-aloud with wide appeal for adults and children three years and older.
