eBook Review: The Elephant's Child: How the Elephant Got His Trunk

This one's for you, Dad!  (My dad loves Rudyard Kipling)

The Elephant's Child: How the Elephant Got His Trunk is a free eBook from B&N.  The narrator is awesome.  He sounds like he should be narrating a PBS nature show.  About elephants.

Poor baby elephant has bad role models and absentee parents. All the animals of the savannah keep telling him to stop asking questions.

"So many questions! Take your nosy-nose somewhere else!"

The Kokoloko bird, channeling coyote or raven,  sends the little elephant off to go ask a crocodile what he eats for dinner.  CHOMP.  This is a slightly more violent tale than I would normally abide for my own little elephant, but it IS Rudyard Kipling, and he DOES hearken from the days of yore when cautionary tales were sprinkled with chomping crocodiles, child-eating witches and poisoned apples.  In the end, though, the elephant ends up with a dextrous schnozz and shares his story with the nasty creatures who wouldn't answer his questions earlier in the story.  Such is the love of a child.

FYI: Did you know that the term pachyderm is now obsolete?  It's true!  Wikipedia told me so.

eBook Review: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I love free stuff.  And this eBook was free from the Amazon App Store.  This eBook is best enjoyed with a big mug full of rum-spiked eggnog.  Or something a little stronger.

There are 3 options for this one: Auto Play, Read to Me and Read it Myself.  I did the Read to Me option, and I managed to be only slightly heebie-jeebied by the talking snowman.

You can click on the illustrations once creepy snowman dude stops narrating and you are rewarded with the spoken and written identification of whatever object you tapped.  Not enough of the objects are labeled, however.  I would have gotten a kick out of hearing the snowman say "Reindeer Butt."

This nostalgic tale of stymied conformity contains vocabulary like "Red Schnoz" and a suspiciously gay-looking elf named Hermey who hates making toys and wants to be a dentist.  Rudolph and Hermey run away from home and encounter a prospector named Yukon Cornelius; the Abominable Snow Monster; and King Moonracer (the flying lion who rules the land of the misfit toys).  The plot is nutty, the characters fickle and there is a terrible ripping sound effect as Hermey the gay dentist elf extracts the Abominable Snow Monster's teeth (after he dropped a huge chunk of ice on its head).

What on earth were they on when they made this?   I LOVE it!!!  But I will NOT be reading it with my progeny until he's old enough to discuss concepts like narrative structure.  Or the lack thereof.

 (I couldn't make this stuff up, it's too good!)