I’m trying to use more non-fiction in my storytimes, so when I found Elephants Can Paint, Too by Katya Arnold, I felt like I’d hit the jackpot. Katya Arnold shows in amazing photos her two different painting classes, one for children and one for elephants. It’s so fun to see on one page a young boy holding a brush in his hand and painting a mural of brightly-colored dots, and on the next page, a similar dot painting being made by an elephant with a brush wrapped tightly in her trunk! There’s large, minimal text for young listeners and more informational text for older readers, but all ages will be astounded by the beautiful art elephants can paint.
The best extension you can do after sharing this book with kids is to let them paint! Get out the watercolors! Try the fingerpaints! (Did you know that if you mix food coloring in with corn syrup, you can make your own edible fingerpaint? Yum!) To exercise both hemispheres of the brain, try painting with your non-dominant hand – just leave the nose-painting to the elephants!
Guess Who Is Out of the Den?
