Have a Heart

books:


	• Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People, and War Yukio Tsuchiya Houghton Mifflin, 1997 - 32 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent!

I use "Faithful Elephants" with my middle school Halocaust unit. My students love to see a different perspective of WWII, and I cry every time I read it. It is probably not suitable for elementary but quite poignant for secondary school students.

Beautiful

I just attended a Peace Prize Forum in Sioux Falls, SD, and this book was part of a curriculum for teaching children about peace and war. I think it is one of the most powerful books I have ever read.
This is a tender book about how war affects life, in a way accessible for children, and equally vivid and profound for adults.
The illustrations are also beautiful.

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Have a Heart

This is a response to Tamara Lakeman's review:

It's a shame that there are people who feel that it is necessary to censor literature which brings awareness to all aspects of war, including death, compassion, and despair. Yes the elephants died as a result of being starved to death. However, the trainers were put in a position of having to carry out an order that forever scared them thus leading them to cry out in despair of what the war had done to them, and their beloved animals.

Would the reviewer feel the same if the story was about three American soldiers who were forced to let their Japanese friends starve to death in a cell because of being on opposing sides?

Oh, let's just sweep everything about death and dying under the rug. Let's cover our children's ears so that they may be ignorant and pretend that nothing bad ever happens including the millions of animals that are euthanized yearly because of irresponsible humans!

The story calls for awareness. It's making people aware of the terrible things that happen in our world. Every once in a while we all need a little wake up call. Maybe we can help in preventing these things from happening again in the future instead of retaining an egocentric, self centered, it's all about me lifestyle.

This reviewer forgets to mention that every August 15th, "Faithful Elephants" is read over the radio in Japan in hopes of bringing awareness of the effects of war. Does the reviewer know that zoos in Iraq were abandoned during this war? Many of those animals starved to death as well. Remember... History repeats itself.

I agree that reading the book as a bedtime story would be obviously inappropriate (as with any war story), however I do feel it will bring out the compassionate side of anyone who has a heart not just reserved for his or her own corner of the world.

The only reason why I will not read this book to my students in the classroom is that I would end up crying: I will however read it to my own children. Maybe one day I will go to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo Japan and a paper crane on the three elephants' memorial.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

A zookeeper recounts the story of John, Tonky, and Wanly, three performing elephants at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, whose turn it is to die, and of their keepers, who weep and pray that World War II will end so their beloved elephants might be saved.

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