A Parade of Elephants, By Kevin Henkes

Henkes, K. (2020). A parade of elephants. Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers. 

This counting board book is a colorful introduction to numbers 1 to 5 and some basic opposites. With a soothing color palette consisting of pastel pink, yellow, green, magenta and blue, this is a perfect bedtime book. The illustrations of the small, cute elephants appear to be done through digital methods, providing sharply defined yet gentle images. It’s quite easy to imagine a baby or toddler looking through this book on their own for the illustrations, or an adult reading the simple words to a young child. 

This book is also available in picture book format, and while it works very well in both board book and picture book format, it seems better suited to board book format, as the simplicity of the illustrations, words, and basic opposites are more baby and young toddler material than older toddler material. As babies are likely to be less gentle with pages than toddlers, the board book format probably suits this book best. 

Colors are used to introduce multiple identical characters. Four out of the five elephants look the same, with the fifth one being a baby elephant. The only difference between the four adult elephants are the color that fills their outline. This book uses a fairly strict color palette, never deviating from the magenta, pink, green, blue, and yellow, even for the background and foreground of the images. Parents may be able to take this opportunity to point out the different colors of the elephants and introduce each one, or count the elephants, of which there are five. The child may also note that they are most like the small baby elephant in terms of age and relative size. 

The simplicity of the words in this book are perfect for the intended age group. The trickiest and longest words in the book are “parade” and “elephant”, both of which appear in the title. While A is for Awesome provided too many of these tricky words for the intended audience, A Parade of Elephants provides a healthy mix of tricky and lengthy, and short and sweet. 

Finally, as previously mentioned, this book provides a wonderful opportunity to introduce some basic concepts. In addition to color and numbers 1 through 5, this book also deals with opposites, such as in and out and up and down. For babies and toddlers, this may be their first time encountering the concept of opposites, providing parents or caregivers with the perfect opportunity to teach their child something new. 

Overall, A Parade of Elephants is an absolutely delightful book filled with moments to teach and enchantingly colorful illustrations.