The Elephant from Baghdad

Gr 2–4—Harris, Holmes, and Cannell draw on early sources and art to tell this tale of a long-ago special friendship that developed between the caliph of Baghdad and Charlemagne. As in Holmes and Cannell's My Travels with Clara (Getty, 2007) and the trio's A Giraffe Goes to Paris (Marshall Cavendish, 2010), the story is told by a narrator who was supposedly a participant in the reported events. Here it is Notker the Stammerer, a monk who in fact wrote a chronicle of Charlemagne's life. He explains that the emperor was curious about the legendary Harun al-Rashid and "sent some trusted men of his court...thousands of miles, from Germany, across the Alps to Italy, and finally by boat across the Mediterranean" to make the acquaintance of the famous ruler at the center of the Muslim world. Wanting to give Charlemagne a gift "fit for a fellow emperor," he gives him his prized albino elephant. The splendors of Baghdad lose a bit of their luster in Cannell's homely, naive drawings, though the long return journey by foot with the white elephant bearing a huge mechanical clock atop his back is aptly suggested. Oddly, the travelers seem to have no other baggage, and there's no sign of the multitude of other costly gifts they received. A broad map conveys the long route to and fro, and inserted reprints show a lifelike bust of Charlemagne, a stylized painting of Harun al-Rashid, and a silk cloth woven with elephants found in Charlemagne's tomb. The extreme journey is intriguing, Charlemagne's love for the elephant is heartwarming, and for readers becoming interested in history, this tiny glimpse of the eighth-century world is an inviting introduction to that era. The authors include closing notes on Notker the Stammerer and the magical mechanical water clock—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston