Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing

This is one of the best picture books I have read in a long time! The Brooklyn Bridge is completed and skeptics wonder just how long it will stand. P. T. Barnum decides to capitalize on their skepticism and arranges a parade of his elephants across the bridge as they head to Manhattan for their latest migration of the "Greatest Show on Earth." I teach a class of 25 1st grade students in a 'gifted' classroom and they were riveted throughout the entire story...and so were the two parent volunteers at the back of the room. The vocabulary is extremely rich and advanced and this book provided wonderful enrichment to our study of bridges in a community. One of the best parts of the book was the final 'Author's Note' which described the extensive research that an author must complete to create an effective story.

It took fourteen years of construction to build the Brooklyn Bridge, connecting Brooklyn and New York - but some wondered how much weight the new bridge could safely handle. One man decided to show them it was strong enough to hold even the heaviest passenger -- and demonstrated this with elephants. The man's name? P.T. Barnum. It reads with the drama of fiction but Twenty-one Elephants And Still Standing is based on fact, which is even more intriguing.