Watch out there is a mammoth on the loose! My daughter loved the blingy cover of Mammoth by Anna Kemp and Adam Beer and it just gets better from there!
The story begins on the title page, which has been beautifully illustrated by Adam to act like the opening credits of a movie. We see the mammoth, frozen in the Ice Age. What follows is the story of the mammoth waking up in the 21st century.
Everything is strange in the new land. It’s full of shiny trees and noisy beetles! But where is his herd? He begins to wonder if he is the only mammoth in the world.
He sees a sign with a mammoth on it. He has no idea what an Ice Age exhibition is, but he can’t wait to see his herd again. Except, it’s not what he expected. The mammoth is furious! What ever will he do next and will he ever find his herd?
This laugh-out-loud story also contains universal messages of feeling out of place, being misunderstood, and longing to find your people (or herd). Something I think we can all relate to as children starting nursery or school and even as adults, later in life. What makes Mammoth work so well is that the child reader knows more than the mammoth from the start. We know he has woken up in a modern city, not an Ice Age forest and mammoths have long been extinct. But we are still rooting for him, to find a family.
Mammoth is hilarious and heart-warming with a beautiful universal message that I think we can all relate to. I think this would be a fascinating text to share in a class, to open discussions on seeing the world from different perspectives, fitting in and making friends.
Published by Simon and Schuster, 27 May 2021
I am very grateful to the publisher for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book. This voluntary review contains my honest opinion.
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