An Elephant Grows Up is a 2006 picture book written by Anastasia Suen and illustrated by Michael L. Denman and William J. Huiett.
This is a good nonfiction picture book, part of a Wild Animal series. The language is clear and easy to follow, and Suen uses useful analogies to help young readers grasp facts about elephants, like saying the newborn elephant calf “weighs more than a refrigerator.” The images are sharply defined and nicely detailed; we can see not just the elephant, but the wrinkles near their eyes and long hair on their tails.
Both text and image work to show different aspects of elephant life and different things elephants do. We get, for example, elephants using their trunks to gather leaves from high in trees and then, on the next page, using tusks to dig for water.
The book’s closing pages offer a diagram of an elephant, with basic body parts labeled, a map showing where elephants live.
All in all, a good, useful educational text. I have only two areas where I would want change. First, some things are shown, but not explained: are the elephants beside the calf pressing their trunks against it to help it stand? To reassure it? Express love? Second, while the focus on elephants is clearly conscious, this still leaves them sort of context free: we don’t know what they eat, if other animals hunt them, and so on.
But for what it is and does, this is good and strong.
