The Shadow Elephant

A gentle story about sadness showing that sometimes all you need to feel better is the openness of someone who accepts you as you are. A Financial Times Best Children’s Book of 2021This is a subtle story about an elephant who is feeling sorrowful, and nothing seems to interest him or lift his spirits.

Illustrated with a striking contrast between shadow and light, the moody blue elephant appears to live in a different world from his colorful savanna friends.

Empathy is a tricky emotion for children and adults alike to grasp, but The Shadow Elephant manages to walk the line between sadness, understanding, and emotional connection.

Here we witness, in a story that unfolds at a natural, gentle pace, that it’s okay to be sad and to show it, and that this sorrow is not necessarily a problem to be fixed, but is a feeling to acknowledge without judgement.

This simple act of acceptance and validating another creature's feelings is subtle, yet, it is an essential step to true empathy.