Reading notes: The Elephant Girly-face (A)

 Source: The Elephant Girly-face

by Ellen C. Babbitt

The elephant's name is girly-face, which I do not love so much because it was used to describe the elephant as gentle, and not all girls are gentle!

The elephant overhears robbers talking about being cruel and evil, and thinks that they are telling him how to act.

So the elephant kills the keeper when he came to feed him.

Then killed another keeper.

So no one would go to see the elephant anymore out of fear of being killed.

So a wise man was sent to see what was wrong with the elephant, and he saw nothing wrong so assumed the elephant heard bad men talking and those bad men influenced his actions.

So the solution is to send good men to talk near the elephant so hopefully the elephant will be influenced by them as well.

The best and kindest men were sent to talk near the elephant, saying one must be kind and gentle and not hurt others.

The elephant hear this and returned to being the sweet elephant it was.

This story had a powerful message of how easily minds can be influenced by others. There are many correlations between the intelligence of elephants and humans and I think this story shows a similarity between the developing minds of a child and the mind of an elephant.

Overhearing influence