Book Tour: You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Racing Car

This post contains gifted items. All views are our own.

We’re delighted to be taking part this week in the Bloomsbury Book Tour for the newly released picture book You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Racing Car by Patricia Cleveland-Peck and David Tazzyman.

You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Racing Car is the fifth title in the best-selling Elephant series, which also includes You Can’t Take an Elephant on the Bus, You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Digger, and You Can’t Call an Elephant in an Emergency, and You Can’t Take an Elephant on Holiday. With over a quarter of a million copies sold, the Elephant books are firm favourites with children who love the fun humour and catchy rhymes. My youngest is also a big fan – we’ve previously reviewed You Can’t Take an Elephant on Holiday and we’ve read some of the others at the library too – so he was super keen to read this latest addition to the series.

Like the other books in the series, You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Racing Car features the titular elephant alongside a parade of other animal friends, who all get themselves in to a bit of a pickle trying out various popular sports. From figure skating alligators to cricket playing kangaroos to weight lifting wombats, their silly animal antics will have kids giggling and laughing out loud. And of course there’s the elephant and his racing car.

My son’s favourite animals were the walrus “because he’s bumping everyone off the track with his bum” (hilarious when you’re seven!) and the hippo “because you get to turn the book the other way round”. My own favourite was the colourful octopus, though we both agreed that she was cheating by using eight bats. My son pointed out that just because the octopus has eight ‘hands’ that didn’t mean she should be allowed eight bats because “the human she is playing against has two hands but only one bat”. Can’t argue with that logic!

For an extra little treat, here is children’s books dream team Sue Hendra & Paul Linnet sharing a reading of You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Racing Car:

You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Racing Car is a funny, rhyming escapade filled with an array of hilarious animal characters and lots of sporting chaos. It’s perfect for reading aloud, or for early readers to sound out the rhymes themselves. You can also see what details you can spot together in the colourful illustrations, or use the rhymes as a talking point to chat about your own favourite sports or which sports your child might like to try when they are older. The book is available to buy or order from most book stores.

Disclosure: We were gifted a free copy of You Can’t Let an Elephant Drive a Racing Car in return for an honest review. All opinions are our own. Many thanks to Bloomsbury for inviting us to be part of this book tour.