SuitabookYou Can’t Take An Elephant On the Bus
Patricia Cleveland-Peck
- Reading
- Read the rhymes aloud and pause before turning each page or reaching the suggested solution. Invite predictions, then compare the illustrations with the words and make up one new animal journey together.
- Themes
- Imagination through absurd combinations: Animals are placed in unsuitable vehicles, and the resulting combinations generate the book’s humour before the animals ask how they should travel. The book clearly celebrates silly invention and invites readers to extend the pattern with their own scenarios.
- Animals, bodies and suitability: Different animals are matched against vehicles that supposedly cannot accommodate their size, shape, movement or habits. The comic framing makes the pairings playful, but the available extracts do not establish whether the book reflects on or simply repeats these animal stereotypes.
- The animals’ travel question: After a series of unsuitable journeys, the animals interrupt and ask how they are supposed to travel; the narrator then proposes one method of transport for all. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Some scenes involve imagined mess, damage or danger: a bear near an ice-cream van, a camel in a sailing boat and a hippo in a hot-air balloon. These are presented as comic absurdity rather than realistic peril.