I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

A book about a sad dad and the elephant that follows him and how our MC goes to help out her dad by getting rid of the elephant. Along the way there is the school’s 100th birthday where the kids have to bring something really old (I wonder what I would bring if I was a kid in that school, don’t even know if we ever had something really old, maybe jewellery?) and show what it is. We see our MC is thinking of bringing her bike, which used to belong to her mom. But how to convince dad since he is fixing it and being under pressure from an elephant.
I had fun seeing what each kid brought with them and I adored what Olive brought to the party. That is just such a wonderful idea.

I wished the dad had found help from a professional a long time ago, or talked to someone about all of this, let it all out instead of having an elephant crush him (which is an all too familiar feeling, I have had plenty of elephants, though I would think my animal more as a bear, throughout my life). Especially if you have a kid. Your kid needs you. You are the only parent Olive has. She needs to be able to rely on you, not have to constantly be worried about you and your health. 🙁 Or having to feel bad because she asks you something. But I could see that he loved her, well before the ending and what was shown there. He was being pressed by an elephant, but his love for her never went away.

I am glad she had her grandfather who did an amazing job at caring for her, making sure she had food and such in her stomach, he took her outside to wonderful places, told her about her mom, or if he knew she was thinking about her mom he was there for her to talk or distract her with something else. I loved her grandfather, such a wonderful sweet man. I adored what they did on top of that building, how they made several people’s day by just complimenting them in a fun way.

Arthur was such a wonderful friend and I loved how he instantly believed Olive on the elephant matter and even went so far to find elephant facts.

I understand that this is a children’s book, but I found the end a bit too unbelievable. He has been mourning, feeling sad, for such a long time, I am sorry just one fun event isn’t going to glue it all together, it isn’t going to fix it. He needs more help, more talks, more moments like these to make his life better. I just don’t want kids to think that things will get fix so easily. Again, speaking for experience.

I didn’t notice this was going to be PDF (and not sure if I requested this book BEFORE or AFTER Netgalley finally implemented what format the book would be). 176 pages on my computer screen… well my headache has definitely worsened. I tried reading it on my Kindle, because while PDF will be messy, with 5-10% of the books you can still read it somehow. However… the illustrations were just gone from the book on my Kindle. sighs Would be nice if publishers would just only do epub/mobis instead of the constant PDFs that almost no one wants.

But all in all, this was a beautiful book about loss, mourning, and finding happiness. I hope that the father seeks further help and that he and his daughter and father can have many more happy moments. The art was also quite pretty.