20 Sep The Memory of an Elephant: A Most Unusual Children’s Book
From one of my very favorite bloggers, Maria Popova, of Brainpickings fame, comes her take on a fabulous children’s book that she declares is “a most unusual children’s book for lovers of midcentury modern design” and “an immeasurable treat for kids and introspective grownups alike.”
Psychologists believe that our capacity for creative work hinges on our memory and the ability to draw on our mental catalog of remembered experiences and ideas. More than that, memory is our lifeline to our own selves. Indeed, can there be anything more central to identity than memory?
The Memory of an Elephant: An Unforgettable Journey is a most unusual picture-book by writer Sophie Strady and illustrator Jean-François Martin. Unusual not because it measures an impressive 15 inches in height — though that alone makes it a kind of enchanting narrative poster — but because it blends the fascination of encyclopedic curiosity with deep questions about memory, identity, and what makes a life worthwhile.
Marcel is a soulful old elephant who sets out to write an encyclopedia as his legacy. Having seen the Eiffel Tower built in 1889 and the first iMac introduced in 1998, and having filled the century between with a long lifetime of adventures and successes of his own, he undertakes “the enormous task of listing — in an enormous, illustrated encyclopedia — everything he’s learned throughout his long and exceptional life.”
But just as he is about to begin looking back on his many years and drawing on his vast memory-bank of knowledge, he finds his living room…
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