Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's Ralph Helfer Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0060929510 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Modoc is the joint biography of a man and an elephant born in a small German circus town on the same day in 1896. Bram was the son of an elephant trainer, Modoc the daughter of his prize performer. The boy and animal grew up devoted to each other. When the Wunderzircus was sold to an American, with no provision to take along the human staff, Bram stowed away on the ship to prevent being separated from his beloved Modoc. A shipwreck off the Indian coast and a sojourn with a maharajah were only the beginning of the pair's incredible adventures. They battled bandits, armed revolutionaries, cruel animal trainers, and greedy circus owners in their quest to stay together. They triumphed against the odds and thrilled American circus audiences with Modoc's dazzling solo performances, only to be torn apart with brutal suddenness, seemingly never to meet again. Hollywood animal trainer Ralph Helfer rescued Modoc from ill-treatment and learned her astonishing story when Bram rediscovered her at Helfer's company. His emotional retelling of this true-life adventure epic will make pulses race and bring tears to readers' eyes.
--Wendy Smith From School Library Journal
Grade 3-5–From her early days in Germany to a starring role in Americas Ringling Brothers Circus by way of shipwreck and months of teak hauling in India, Modocs story matches her larger-than-life size. The elephants life is intertwined with that of a boy with whom she was raised from infancy and who became her longtime circus partner. According to the book jacket, the author owned Modoc for the last 20 years of her life. The story is adapted from his adult book,
Modoc. The large picture-book format is the typical choice for Lewins fine watercolors, boldly portraying the dramatic episodes of the elephants life and the story of friendship, separation, and reunion. This bold and heartwarming adventure tale should have wide appeal.
–Margaret Bush, Simmons College, BostonCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
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- Age Range: 12 and up
- Grade Level: 7 and up
- Paperback: 325 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 26, 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060929510
- ISBN-13: 978-0060929510
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Let me start off by saying that I do love this book. It's a beautiful story that is well written and filled with emotion. Admittedly, this book had me in tears a few times. It is definitely aimed at tugging the heart strings.
What disappoints me about this book is that it claims to be a true story, when it is indeed mostly fiction. There are only tiny bits of fact in there, and those facts are mostly exaggerated. Things that started tipping me off:
1. The author describes most of the Indian elephants (aka Asian elephants) as having tusks. In reality, tusks on Asian elephants are pretty uncommon.
2. The author describes Modoc as having tusks, even to the end of the book soon before she died. Yet in the pictures in the book, the elephant shown has no tusks at all.
3. A circus owner on the hunt for *years* in a foreign country all for one elephant? I doubt that seriously.
4. No dates are given, and for being a work of "fact", I found it odd that no sources are ever listed except for very vague comments (i.e. saying that newspapers wrote articles, but never naming any specific paper)
5. Most information cannot be found except in reference to this particular book.
6. There is an act of a bull's mating with a cow (bull=male elephant, cow=female elephant) that seems way over the top and incredibly ferocious, quite unlike actual mating "rituals" among elephants.
After some extensive research, including research with the Circus Historical Society, I discovered that many elephants were named Modoc, the most famous being "Big Modoc" owned by the Ringling Bros Circus.
This is a really incredible and moving story about how Bram Gunterstein and his elephant Modoc grew up together and shared all of their lives together except for the years when they were separated after the circus they were in sold all of the animals. I love animals, and it's nice to see a story about the bond between a human and an elephant; most human-animal stories feature dogs, cats, horses, ponies, and sometimes birds and small mammals like guinea pigs. It's also told in a very lively and page-turning way, which makes it a quick read. Some reviewers have suggested that there's no way Bram and Modoc could have had all of those adventures, like being shipwrecked, the mystical psychic encounter with the Raja's white elephant in the middle of the night, the war in Burma around the time of WWI, and all of their circus adventures, but many times truth is stranger than fiction, even if Mr. Helfer might have taken artistic license with some of the things he obviously wasn't there for.
My main problem with the story is that dates are only given maybe two or three times. We're not even told what year it is when the story begins. That makes it really hard to keep track of how old the two main characters are over the years and through their many adventures. And where are all of the important world events going on during this time, particularly WWI (which we only see a little of towards the end of their stay in Burma, when the liberation army comes to their village and terrorises everyone) and WWII? Don't they have any impact on the lives of these characters and the events they're taking part in? Also, a lot is made of Mr. North's "racial attitudes," but the only thing Jewish about Bram that I saw in the book is his last name.
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