The Shadow Elephant
The Shadow Elephant
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Written by Nadine Robert
Illustrated by Valerio Vidali
A Financial Times Best Children’s Book of 2021
Sometimes all you need is someone who accepts you as you are.
This is a subtle story about an elephant who is down in the dumps. Illustrated with a striking contrast between shadow and light, the moody blue elephant appears to live in a different world from his colorful savannah friends. Empathy is a tricky emotion for children and adults alike to grasp, but The Shadow Elephant manages to walk the thin blue line between sadness, understanding, and emotional connection. Sometimes, it’s okay to be sad and to show it. It’s also okay not to have a quick fix. Better, in fact, to acknowledge someone else’s feelings without judgement, which can be the very best gift of all.
ISBN: 978-1-59270-312-8
11 ⅝” (W) x 9 ⅝” (H) • 48 pages • HCJ
AWARDS & REVIEWS
A Financial Times Best Children’s Book of 2021
“This picture book about sadness features an elephant who is blue both literally and figuratively. The contrast between him and his happier animal friends comes through in both the understated text and the richly colored images. Sorrow, we learn, can’t always be remedied but can be understood.” —Financial Times
“The book’s uncluttered compositions with tightly framed perspectives and Vidali’s sure lines and simple shapes reduce the dramatic action to its essentials. The palette, dominated by velvety, richly colored blues, heightens the book’s emotional impact, and the beguiling use of light and shadow establishes a wistful, pensive mood. The story, including its evocative title, can serve as an effective conversation starter on topics such as compassion, melancholy, and what it means to be a friend. A deeply felt, truly empathetic story about the value of sharing burdens with others.”—Kirkus Reviews
“The strange thing about life, the wondrous thing about life, is that it is impossible to dull one hue of our emotional experience without dulling the entire spectrum, impossible to feel deeply at one end of it without feeling as deeply at the other… And yet we go to extreme lengths to avoid receiving [the] shock of aliveness, to avoid fully feeling the portions of the spectrum we deem unhandsome or inconvenient, to dull our own sadnesses and divert others from theirs, then walk away when we fail. It is a human impulse, this urge to shoo the sadness away. It is also dehumanizing, for only when we let the blues rush in with their full intensity do we become fully alive and awake to the dazzling spectrum of feeling that makes life worth living. That is what Canadian author Nadine Robert & Italian artist Valerio Vidali explore with great subtlety and tenderness in The Shadow Elephant.”—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings