Beryl Young,
Follow the Elephant
Ronsdale Press, 2010.

Ages: 10+

In Beryl Young’s Follow the Elephant, Norah Leeson, on a search for her long-lost pen pal, Shanti Mukherjee, sets out from Vancouver to Delhi in the company of her thirteen-year-old grandson Ben. Norah foists the trip on Ben, who is still recovering from the early death of his father, because she feels that it will help him work through his unexpressed grief.

Follow the Elephant is a chapter book divided into days. Things happen, and quickly, to Ben and Norah as they try to find Shanti.  In a way, it seems an impossible task – to locate a young woman from Norah’s past out of the billions of people living in the country on the thinnest of leads.  Yet, the two characters fumble along, persisting, and coping at the same time with each other, as they experience India in a myriad of dimensions.  Typical tourist sites are mentioned and encountered – the Red Fort, the Taj Mahal, the Ganges River at Varanasi – but other special events happen, too, that shape Ben’s mind in particular.  He’s drawn magically and mystically to the elephant, and to the elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesh.

Will Ben and Norah find Shanti?  More importantly, will this quest heal Ben and reconcile him to the loss of his father, who was also Norah’s only and beloved son?  In Follow the Elephant,  grandmother and grandson are not just on a literal journey, but on a spiritual one as well, and with India as the setting, it is not surprising how their trip changes Ben’s life and attitudes.

On this truly fantastic intergenerational journey through the Indian subcontinent, author Beryl Young has done a wonderful job of getting into the mind of a thirteen-year-old boy.  Young adroitly explores Ben’s feelings of loss and helplessness as he works through the implications of his father’s early death on himself and his grandmother.  The trip not only gives Ben perspective on his father’s death, but it also cements his relationship with his grandmother in an exciting and lasting way that is sure to leave an impression on readers. 

Sally Ito
October 2010