Ellie

PreS-Gr 2—Ellie, a reticent young elephant with endearingly huge eyes, resides in a run-down zoo. When Walt the zookeeper announces that the zoo must close for good, the animals decide that sprucing up the place might save it. Everyone pitches in according to their talents—Gerard the gorilla clears away rocks, Lucy the giraffe trims trees—but Ellie feels useless and left out. Serendipitously, she happens to find some paint and a brush left behind by Walt, and discovers that she's a splendid artist. Soon, she decorates the entire zoo and gains renown as the painting elephant, attracting crowds and saving her home. Wu's dynamic watercolor illustrations enliven the story, their retro/classic feel possessing a distinctive animation quality that is unsurprising, given Wu's background as a Pixar animator. The effective use of color emphasizes Ellie's transformation, subdued greens and grays becoming a veritable chromatic explosion, "before" and "after" looks of the zoo cleverly highlighted in the endpapers.