Posted on by TracyC

Ella the Elephant

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Ella the Elephant by Kurt Wiese, 1931.

EllaElephantMotherElla is a happy baby elephant in India.  Her mother takes good care of her, and she enjoys moving with the herd.  However, Ella’s carefree life with her mother ends abruptly when the herd is captured by humans!

Because Ella is small, she is able to escape when the other elephants can’t, but she finds herself alone and frightened in the jungle.  She doesn’t know what has happened to her mother, and she is in danger from predators in the jungle.

Other jungle animals help her, warning her of dangers and helping her to find out where her mother is.  She knows to look out for crocodiles in the river, and a peacock and some monkeys warn her about the presence of the tiger.  A kind water buffalo looks after her at night, using its size to intimidate and keep away the tiger.  The parrots help her to find the village where her mother is being held.  Eventually, she reunites with her mother in the human village after she is captured a second time.

I found this book at an antique store and included it here because I’d never seen it before, but I have mixed feelings about it.  The part about other animals helping little Ella is fun, but it’s somewhat disappointing that the story ends with both Ella and her mother in captivity.  The story ends with Ella’s reunion with her mother, and we don’t know exactly what happens to them after that. It appears that Ella and her mother will both be treated well by the humans who now have them, and they are relieved to see each other.  Still, to have them now living in captivity seems anti-climactic.

Posted on by TracyC

The Case of the Lost Lookalike

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The Case of the Lost Lookalike by Carol Farley, 1988.

“I want to swoop in and spout out the answers to baffling mysteries while everyone around me blinks in befuddlement.  I want to reveal the amazing solutions to puzzles while everyone gasps in admiration.  Except the criminal, of course, who gasps for other reasons.”
— Flee Jay Saylor

This is the second book in the the Flee Jay and Clarice Mysteries.

In The Case of the Lost Lookalike, Flee Jay and Clarice are spending the summer at a lake with their aunt, and someone there says that Clarice is the very image of a little girl named Caroline who was apparently kidnapped 40 years ago.  Little Caroline disappeared from her own bedroom one night after her mother died under rather suspicious circumstances.  Most people assume that Caroline is dead, too.  The girl’s father is now a strange recluse who lives on an island in the middle of the lake.

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But, as the girls puzzle over this old mystery, other mysterious things begin to happen.  A woman produces pictures of the missing girl which look nothing like Clarice.  Then, her shop is broken into, and the pictures of Caroline disappear.

When someone persuades their aunt to let the girls visit the old recluse on the island, the man’s reaction is surprising, and they come to realize that Caroline’s disappearance might not be the real issue at all.  Clarice takes some frightening risks to get to the bottom of the mystery!

My Reaction

In a way, this story is two mysteries in one because Clarice figures out what really happened to Caroline when she disappeared years ago at the same time that the girls unravel the mystery that is affecting people who live in the small town by the lake now.  The mystery of what happened to Caroline would not have resurfaced at this particular time if someone else hadn’t brought up the issue as a distraction from something else.

What I like best about this series is the sense of humor and the way that Flee Jay says things as she narrates the story: “I mean, new cottages and magic lakes are terrific and all that, but nothing can ever take the place of a peanut-butter, brown sugar, and banana sandwich.”