Cover Characteristic: Elephant(s)

The Cover Characteristic meme is hosted at  Sugar and Snark.   Here are the guidelines:

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5 favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in Linky (so we can visit).
You don’t even need to participate, just stopping by and saying hi would be great! Don’t forget to stop by the other participants!

So I found just about exactly 5 for this.  I think in no particular order.  These are all books I've read.

1.

2.

3.

Now these next two are mammoths, so kind of elephants.

4.

5.

So, I'm guessing that everyone doing this will end up with the Water for Elephants cover.  Can you think of any other covers? 

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I have wanted to read this book for a long time. Many of the people I work with at the bookstore loved this book. I put it on my list to read, figuring it would be good, but another of those popular books that wouldn't make my favorites list. Boy was I wrong! I finally figured I needed to get it read before the movie comes out, as I prefer to read books before movies, even if that often ruins the movie.

I haven't read a good circus story in a long time, probably not since Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. I loved this story! It starts out with our main character as an older man living in a nursing home. Jacob Jankowski is living there when the circus comes to town and they can see it from the nursing home. As it is getting set up, he drifts off into memories of when he was a part of the circus. How he left vet school because of his parents dying, and ran off and jumped on a train. The train happened to belong to the Benzini Brothers circus. And there were already some people in the train car he jumped on. They helped him get a job in the circus. Once it was found out about him almost being a vet, the big guy, Uncle Al, hired him to take care of the animals. Jacob gets a look at one of the stars of the show, Marlena. He becomes a friend/companion to her and her husband August. August has issues with his temper, and as the time goes by Jacob and Marlena deal with this, even while the two of them begin to fall in love. Uncle Al likes to swoop in on circuses that have gone bust and take what he can. After one spot he finds and purchases an elephant. At first it seems as if the elephant is stupid, but soon Jacob finds that is just that the elephant doesn't understand English commands.

This historical novel ties into prohibition and all the stuff going on with circuses at the time. The end is so good, so so good. I still remember gasping as one thing happened, sitting with my mouth wide open as I read the book in shock. I am so ready to see the movie now. Never mind that it stars Robert Pattinson. :-)

One other thing that I really love about this book is that the author wrote it during National Novel Writing Month. It just awes me because this book is so well researched and I love the pictures that are from actual circuses from the past with each chapter.

Elephant Run by Roland Smith

I am a HUGE Roland Smith fan. I was first introduced to his writing when he came to speak at my school, and I have yet to be disappointed by a book from him. I will admit this started out a bit slow, I was reading it just during lunch at school, and I think that was the problem. When you pick this book up and just read, you soon get sucked into it. This is another book that really gets you interested in history. Elephant Run takes place in Burma during World War 2. There isn't really a Burma anymore. It is Myanmar now. But this talks about the elephants in that area and tells how the Japanese came in and used the elephants and the people who trained them, the mahouts, to build up their defense. I love the nature that Roland Smith also uses in his books.

I also like that there are literature circle questions included with this addition of the book. Tempts me to use it as a book I read during my Greater Gator class next year. We'll see. I do kind of like to do books that they can read off the Truman list to help the librarian as well.