The Great American Elephant Chase - Hardcover

Gillian Cross has written many award-winning books for children in her native UK. The Dark Ground Trilogy: Book One is her first book for Dutton Children’s Books.

Grade 4-6-- Part showboat melodrama, part Dickensian squalor, part Barnum hype, and all adventure, this story works. Using the U. S. map as her stage, Cross sends her hero, Tad, on a headlong journey of discovery across a literary landscape scattered with rivers and towns, actual and invented. Children running away with an elephant and trying to hide it from pursuers is an appealing plot device, and not unique. Vivian Alcock used it well in Travelers by Night (Dell, 1990); Tom Tryon, less successfully in The Adventures of Opal and Cupid (Viking, 1992). Khush, the elephant in this chase, is a strong personality, as well defined as Tad, the orphan boy, and Cissie, the con man's headstrong daughter. When Cissie's father is killed in a train wreck, the three join forces in order to to keep Khush from the oily clutches of Mr. Jackson and Esther, villains from Tad's bleak past. The chase, through farming country, down and up rivers by barge, flatboat, and steamer, and across the open prairie, keeps the trio just ahead of the villains as they rush toward Cissie's friend in Nebraska. The parallel journey of Tad's self-discovery, from brow-beaten nonentity in his aunt's stifling boarding house to confident leader across the open Nebraska plains, is neatly developed but never intrudes upon the action. Cross has a long list of good titles behind her, but this may be her first to make the trans-Atlantic voyage so successfully. There is no trace of British sensibility, place, or language. A fine story with universal appeal. --Sally Margolis, Deerfield Public Library, IL
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.