Book Review: Elephant Summer – by Douglas Jackson Channell

Book: Elephant Summer

Author: Douglas Jackson Channell

Publisher: self-published; sold by Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

Date: April 9, 2009

Genre: fictional story based on non fiction; Nature; YA

Pages: 175

Price: (on Kindle) $2.99

My rating: Exciting, excellent story

 

I found this book on Amazon and was drawn by the title.  I love elephants and, in looking at the description of this book, had to read it. I was not disappointed.

The story opens with everyone running from a rogue elephant, so my attention was captured from the very beginning.

During their summer vacation, three young teenage friends – two boys, one girl – visit the archeologist uncle of the boy telling the story. His uncle is living and working in Kenya, Africa. The three teens become involved in learning about a family of elephants and help with gaining new information about them.

Elephants are amazing, intelligent animals, individual in personality and habits. This story brings to the reader’s attention how wonderful these animals are, and how serious is their plight as they are still being destroyed needlessly and cruelly. It is told through the concern and humour of the young friends who have the privilege of learning first-hand about them. There is adventure, danger, teenage antics, humour, and more, set in the jungle camp and surrounding area. It’s a fun book to read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, except for the harsh reality of some scenes which were a little hard to read knowing it does actually happen, but it was handled in such a good way to be suitable for young readers as well. From the title and summary that influenced me to obtain this book, right to the last word in the last chapter, my interest was held. It made me want to be there.

If you like elephants, or enjoy stories about adventures in the wild – in this case, Africa – give this book, Elephant Summer, a try.

You can find Elephant Summer listed on my BUY THE BOOK! page.

Now, apart from the book, and because I love elephants, I’m going to put in a plug here for the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, USA. This is a quote directly off their website: “The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, founded in 1995, is the nation’s largest natural habitat refuge developed specifically for endangered African and Asian elephants.” Check out their website: www.elephants.com  and see what they are doing to help these magnificent animals, one at a time.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂