The Elephant and the Bad Baby

The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont

An imbalanced moral lesson

Apparently, the sight of elephants around the city streets was not unheard of in the early/mid-20th century as circus owners disregarded health and safety and animal rights to use the magnificent creatures as a marketing tool. However, whether one ever actually took an under-3 on a rampage of food-theft  is unconfirmed.

But in a bizarrely British moral balancing act, it’s not the stealing that causes most outrage but the lack of manners on behalf of the Bad Baby when asked by the elephant if he would like him to pinch a snack for him …

“But he didn’t once say please. He didn’t ONCE say please!”

The other very traditionally British aspect to the book –  from a grown-up’s point of view – is the pre-supermarket world it evokes. The Elephant and the Bad Baby go to no less than seven different shops and stalls to get the full gamit of snack food, rather than simply rampaging down the aisles of Sainsburys’… but then it would be a much shorter story!

The Elephant and the Bad Baby follows the classic repetition technique of building up another layer in its verse with each page, as more angry food vendors join in chasing the greedy pair to avenge the theft of their tastiest food item. This repetition – with substitution of the ice-cream man for, say, the barrow boy – has an obvious appeal for toddlers and makes the book ideal for a soothing bedtime story. What’s more, the protagonist succumbs to the classic fate of all the best bedtime tales …

“Then the elephant went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta all down the road, with the ice-cream man, and the pork butcher, and the baker, and the snack-bar man, and the grocer, and the lady from the sweet shop, and the barrow boy all running after.

And the Bad Baby, went to bed.”