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Twenty-One Elephants (Hardcover)

~ (Author), LeUyen Pham (Illustrator) "Ever since she was a little, little girl, Hannah watched the workers build the first steel suspension bridge in the whole world, the Brooklyn Bridge..." (more)
Key Phrases: Brooklyn Bridge
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 2–From toddlerhood on, Hannah has watched the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and cannot wait to walk across it into Manhattan. Her father does not trust the structure and refuses to allow her to cross it. They attend the opening ceremony with President Chester A. Arthur, the mayor of New York, and Mrs. Emily Roebling (the chief engineer), but nothing will convince the man that the architectural marvel is safe. To cheer her up, her father takes her to the circus, where she shares an idea with P. T. Barnum. He shows her a flyer (that readers do not see) advertising a circus parade with the famous Jumbo in the lead. A few days later, 21 elephants cross the bridge and Hannah's father is convinced that it is secure. While the realistically rendered watercolors give a reasonably accurate view of life during the period, Hannah seems to grow very little. It took about eight years to complete the project and the child never looks older than five or six. The author's note indicates that P. T. Barnum actually did parade his elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884. This title would add a little something to a unit on transportation or New York City history, but it doesn't capture the real excitement the bridge held for many people at that time.–Susan Lissim, Dwight School, New York City
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist

Gr. 1-3. In this neatly told story based in fact, Hannah grows up watching the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the world's first steel suspension bridge; but when it's finally completed, her father is afraid to let her walk across it to Manhattan. Others repeatedly echo his fears, but Hannah knows every little thing about the bridge and attempts to reassure naysayers with facts about the 14,680-ton modern marvel. Finally, during a trip to the circus, she asks P. T. Barnum if his 21 elephants could parade across the bridge to prove its safety once and for all. Proclaiming, "Great minds think alike," Barnum proceeds with the stunt he had already planned, and the elephants change her father's mind. Though Hannah is Bildner's invention, a note explains that Barnum did, indeed, march Jumbo and company across the bridge on May 17, 1884. Expressive, warm-hued paintings featuring apple-cheeked characters, capture nineteenth-century Brooklyn as well as Hannah's bright-eyed enthusiasm for the "metal monster." A bibliography is appended. Karin Snelson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Product Details

  • Reading level: Ages 4-8
  • Hardcover: 40 pages
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing (September 28, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0689870116
  • ISBN-13: 978-0689870118
  • Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 9.1 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #280,632 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Phil Bildner
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Ever since she was a little, little girl, Hannah watched the workers build the first steel suspension bridge in the whole world, the Brooklyn Bridge. Read the first page
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Barnum say you'll go with us, November 7, 2005
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 nostalgic baseball picture books, slips true-to-life facts into this book via Hannah's mouth. He also does nice things with repetition and having a little girl character who knows better than her peers but not in a pesky or annoying way.

As I mentioned before, I'm a big big LeUyen Pham fan. If you get a chance, definitely seek out her webpage for glimpses into her other work. In this particular book, Ms. Pham gives us a rather bright and cheery look at 1880's Brooklyn. Costumes, ethnicities, tenements, and cobblestone streets are all brought to bright and sparkling life. Ms. Pham gives Hannah a particularly apple-cheeked shiny look, one that doesn't necessarily suit her at times. There's an illustration of Hannah in the schoolroom where the other girls laughing behind her look like nothing so much as three-dimensional Campbell Soup kids, all missing teeth and sporting near-identical faces. Still, it's this very rounded quality that makes the book so doggone appealing. I also loved the fact that Hannah had scribbled facts about the Brooklyn Bridge, including a graphed drawing of it, on her slate at her desk in school. It's enough to make me forgive the completely stereotyped school librarian included as well.

The book's a beaut, no question. If you don't mind indulging your kids in a little Brooklyn-centered historical fiction, then I do indeed recommend this tale. A fun story that takes some small liberties with an amusing late 19th-century spectacle.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Deft blend of fact and fiction, April 30, 2005
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.
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