You Can’t Take an Elephant on Holiday
Written by Patricia Cleveland-Peck
Illustrated by David Tazzyman
Review
- 4+
This month’s book club pick is one of my favourites!
‘You Can’t Take an Elephant on Holiday’ is a must for your summer holidays. It showcases a variety of animals in preposterous situations that you would NOT want on your holidays. What could go wrong with meerkats playing mini golf or a cheetah in charge of a camper van?
Tazzyman’s illustrations are superb for describing places and the details in these amusing scenarios. It’s a delight to discover the emotions and facial expressions of the holidaymakers with each turn of the page. While Cleveland-Peck skilfully weaves rhyming word pairs and fantastic vocabulary that explain these outrageous situations.
You could point out the different style fonts to help build your child’s awareness of the idea that ‘text has meaning’. You can even talk about your upcoming summer holidays! This book truly captures your attention and provides an opportunity to keep your shared book interaction going.
Speech, Language and Communication Targets
Explore the speech, language and communication targets that could be embedded into your book share time during your summer holidays. Start with selecting 1-2 targets that you would like to focus on and model the chosen targets while looking through the book together. If your child is interested in a particular picture or they comment or ask questions, follow their lead by acknowledging their communication, pausing and making your own comments. If the text is a bit lengthy, talk about and describe the pictures instead of reading the book word for word.
Loves, Interests and Summer Holidays
- Animals (meerkats, cheetahs, elephants, ostriches, orangutans, rhinos, meerkats, armadillos, bisons, piranha fish, lion)
- Summer holidays (beach, desert, ocean, campsite, mini-golf, pier, paddling pool, tour bus, fair)
Stage 1 Gestalt Language Targets
Use the pictures in the book to guide you rather than reading it word for word. These are some examples of Stage 1 gestalts that you could model with your child.
While these are examples of mitigable gestalts, they are not a “one size fits all”. Gestalts should be chosen based on your child’s interests and what’s useful to them.
- Let’s read together
- It’s an animal
- Oh no! You can’t take him on holiday
- It’s so funny!
- It’s a mess
- Look at this!
- Let’s read it again
- Let’s put the book away
Language Targets
Vocabulary
- Categories – wild animals, summer holiday places
- Action words – ignore, adore, hide, leave, charge, relax, eat, spoil, shove, burrow, make, get, see, try, paddle, pedal, dig, lend and more
- Mental and motive verbs – realise, wish, want
- Describing animals, places and actions
- Fancier words – collapse, knack, rampage, unruly, opt, resist, jaunt, berserk, stampede, askew
Early Concepts
- Location – in, near, on, up, out, down, into
- Time – always
- Quantitative – none, all, some, most
- Descriptive – old, deep, crazy, sticky, sweet, razor-sharp, nasty, long, fresh
- Emotions – fright, enjoy, happily, mood, rage, relax
- Negation – can’t, won’t, don’t, wouldn’t
Grammar
- Future verb tense – will, he’ll, she’ll, you’ll
- Modal verbs talking about possible events – should, could, would
- Pronouns – she, her, he, his, they
- Contractions – you’ll, won’t, can’t, you’re, he’d, they’re, it’s
- Conjunctions – and, to, but, so, when, if, or
- Adverbs – happily, badly, unlikely, probably, completely
- Adjectives – old, sticky, sweet, razor-sharp, long, fresh
- Prepositions – in, near, on, up, down
Higher Level Language and Questions
Make Predictions
- what would happen if…?
- which animal will we see next?
- what will happen next?
- what is she saying?
Inferring meaning from pictures
- why is it not a good idea?
- how is he feeling?
Explaining and justifying
- how do you know he is feeling sad?
- why shouldn’t you take an elephant on holiday?
- can you take an elephant on holiday? why not?
Problem-solving
- how would you get the animals back to the wild?
- what could the little boy do?
Speech Sounds Targets
Pick 1 of the speech sound targets below and ask your child to listen for the particular sound while you talk about the book together. There is no pressure for your child to say the words if they don’t want to. This time is for them to focus their attention on the chosen speech sound. The examples below target speech sounds at the beginning of words.
- /g/ – get, give, guide
- /k/ – can’t, camper, collapse, can, campsite, castle, candyfloss, contest
- /s/ – something, some, sun, surfboard, sandcastle, sand, sight
- /f/ – fun, fact, fast, feet, fish, fair
- /sh/ – shove, she, shipping, sharp, sure
- /ch/ – cheetah, charge,
- /j/ – job, jaunt
- /l/ – leave, let, lend, long, lane, lion
- /r/ – rules, relax, rhino, rage, rampage, round, right, resist, realise, razor, roar
- /s clusters/ – spoil, speed, sticky, sweet, spot, stampede
Story Targets
‘You Can’t Take an Elephant on Holiday’ consists of descriptions of events and actions that might happen if you took a range of animals on your summer holidays. There is no story plot. Instead, it’s centred around the theme of holiday locations.
- Settings – beach, garden, campsite, desert, pier, sea, mini golf, tour bus, ocean waves
- Characters – wild animals and people
- Problems – all sorts of reasons why you can’t take these animals on your summer holidays
- Feelings – the illustrations show a range of emotions and expressions that you could talk about and describe
Early Literacy Targets
- Rhyming – past/fast, van/ban, fish/wish
- Syllables – albatross, elephant, piranha, holiday
- Words in different-sized fonts to point out
Book details: Published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
ISBN: 10 – 140 889 8551
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