The child who talked to elephants

Archibald Arthur Cunningham, aka Archie, is only five years old and lives in Kenya with his parents, who own a tea farm. One day in 1947 a baby elephant was born in a village near the plantation. The birth of a baby elephant is an ordinary event in Africa, while the bond that is established between Archie and the animal from the first glance is extraordinary. It is the beginning of a great friendship, made up of games and adventures and Archibald becomes for the locals "the child who talks to elephants".

After six years, however, the time for games ends abruptly: the child, now a boy, must return to England with his family and that of his elephant friend is the first, painful separation of his life. Still, the bond will not be severed forever. Despite the passing of the years, the distance, the changes due to the passage of time and the action of human beings, the feeling that binds Archibald to his friend with big ears and that binds man to nature will never fail.

An idealistic novel full of great feelings, "Archie, the child who spoke to elephants" (Rizzoli, 2022, pp. 224, also e-book) shows once again the talent of Lluís Prats in building stories that have the pace of the great classics for young people. The Catalan writer, again translated with skilful stylistic adherence by Alberto Cristofori, is not afraid to tell us about the importance of goodness and kindness, absolutely necessary themes in a literary context intended first of all for girls who are looking for points of reference. And he is not afraid to tell us a story capable of speaking both to the heart and to the mind of the reader, capable of transmitting and renewing ancient and universal values: friendship, loyalty, the strength that a true bond possesses so as to overcome the temptations. of life and of passing time.

That this bond sees in this case a human being and an animal as protagonists becomes for the author an occasion to remind us how much nature, even the wildest, belongs to us, concerns us, makes us somehow part of us. If as human beings we do not respect it, defend it, love it, we risk losing a lot, perhaps everything. And to find ourselves more alone, in a hostile Earth.