Twenty-One Elephants

Phil had to be at least slightly peeved. In 2004 he wrote and published the amusing little book, "Twenty-One Elephants". It was an amusing and slightly fictionalized retelling of that magnificent publicity stunt P.T. Barnum engineered with his pachyderm crew over the newly finished bridge across the boroughs. Then, in 2005, out comes "Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing" by April Jones Prince. Same story but without the adorable little girl story Bildner had added to his tale. Compare the two and you'll find that Prince is all-facts all-the-time while Bildner uses the already existing facts to make a cute l'il ole story. Bildner might have ended up with the less popular of the two titles had he not been paired with illustrator extraordinaire, LeUyen Pham. I've recently converted into a Pham fan myself, and to my mind she can do very little wrong. Though "Twenty-One Elephants" will not provide you with as factual a book as its more recent successor, it's a story that's bound to appeal to kids from Brooklyn and beyond. When the Brooklyn Bridge was first built in 1884 it was considered to be an architectural marvel by the critics. By the people who'd actually have to travel over it, however, it looked dangerous. For young Hannah, the bridge has been slowly going up her entire life. Now that it is finished, however, Hannah's father considers the structure too flimsy to risk his only daughter on. Determined to convince her papa that it is safe, Hannah appeals first to her immediate family, then her schoolmates, and finally her neighbors. No one can believe that the Brooklyn Bridge is safe, though. In an attempt to cheer his little girl up, Hannah's father takes her to the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Once there, she hatches a plan and gets the attention of Mr. P.T. Barnum himself. Soon thereafter, P.T. Barnum and all twenty-one of his elephants traipse across the Brooklyn Bridge and Hannah's father is at last convinced that the structure really is safe. An Author's Note gives us the facts of the matter and there is a helpful bibliography that provides more information on the event. Of course there was no little girl named Hannah. Mr. Barnum was perfectly capable of thinking up publicity stunts on his own without any outside preschooler intervention. Author Phil Bildner acknowledges this fact in his Author's Note with the statement that, "Surely, somewhere in Brooklyn, there must have been a little girl who saw the bridge as her opportunity. And who's to say that some little girl - some little Hannah - wasn't the source of his [P.T. Barnum's] inspiration?". Who indeed? I remember being in elementary school as a child and learning about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. At the time, I didn't quite understand why a Michigan kid should have to learn about a bridge that was so very far away from Kalamazoo. Looking at this book, the appeal of the process is now greater. Bildner, who until now has limited himself to nosta

This review first appeared in the "Ephrata (PA) Review": The author, a middle-school teacher, has spun a captivating story around a historical event-the building of the Brooklyn Bridge in the late 1800s, and the initial hesitation of many residents to trust in it and use it. Little Hannah's father is one of the doubters. Although Hannah grows up watching the bridge go up, and exhibits ceaseless fascination for the huge structure, her father "always clutched her hand a little tighter and drew in his breath a little deeper whenever she peered out at the modern marvel." When they attend the circus, the herd of 21 elephants, Jumbo at the lead, gives Hannah an idea. She approaches P.T. Barnum to ask to borrow the elephants, but the great showman has already thought of the idea himself. "Great minds think alike, little lady," he tells Hannah. The rest, of course, is verifiable history. Jumbo did indeed lead the herd across the Brooklyn Bridge on May 17, 1884, putting to rest doubts about the structure's safety and strength. Bildner has engineered a deft blending of fiction and fact to construct a tender story, and Pham has illuminated it in golden tones, imparting an old-fashioned feel, and warmth between the doting father and his darling Hannah.