Michael Morpurgo

Devastated to learn that an orphan elephant in the Dresden zoo where their mother works is to be euthanized in anticipation of an upcoming bombing, Lizzie and Karl persuade the zoo director to let them keep the elephant in their garden.

An Elephant in the Garden

Elizabeth Garza

This book sparked my interest in WWII and how zoos handled that situation, but over all I wasn't drawn into this book like I hoped. One of my issues is the break in narrative. It switches from the present to the past, which is not a problem in and of itself. The problem is that the story breaks off into the present that just reads so ... fake. The pieces in the past are written well and I enjoyed it, but that going back to present ... it just wasn't done well, in my humble opinion.

Abby N. Lewis

This was a truly magnificent book, a touching tale about an elephant, survival, and, above all else, the true meaning of family.

kira

An Elephant in the Garden is Simon Reade’s new adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s best-selling children’s novel. 1945. Dresden, Germany. Lizzie, her mother – and an elephant from the zoo, flee the Allied fire-bombing in the end-game of the Second World War. Escaping the Allies’ advance from the West – and also the advancing Russian armies from the East – this extraordinary trio of refugees meet: a downed RAF officer, cowering in a barn; a homeless school choir on the run and their Countess saviour, harbouring them from the Nazis; and the mechanised American cavalry, appearing over the horizon. It is Lizzie’s story – but Marlene, the elephant, is the heroine. Plodding, obdurate, opportunistic, loadbearing, indestructible, cheering – Marlene embodies the stubbornness of the human will and how it will do everything to survive.

An Elephant in the Garden

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