The Twenty-Elephant Restaurant

By Russell Hoban

Book Overview

A man builds a new table sturdy enough for an elephant to dance on and works up to a restaurant with twenty dancing elephants. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Library Binding
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689305931
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Atheneum
• Length: 40 Pages
• Weight: 4.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

For every restauranteur you know

Everybody knows somebody who owns a restaurant or WANTS to own a restaurant. This is the book for them! it is also a book for woodworkers and artisans who value perfection in their work (the owner of the 20 Elephant restaurant hates a table that wobbles and you need to put a matchbook under the leg even BEFORE the elephants dance on it). In a perfect world, every town would have a 20 Elephant Restaurant where talents and craftsmanship are valued more highly than "you want fries with that?" and paper hats.

so wonderful I can't believe this has never been reviewed

I first read this book fifteen or so years ago when I was a university student. I was studying literature at the time and had just read Riddley Walker. I had the privilege to hear Hoban speak at the time and read from Pilgerman which was then a work in progress. As for this book, I noticed Hoban had also written children's stories so I started collecting them. I will just say Twenty Elephant Restaurant is one of the most simple, wonderful and beautiful things ever written. I now read it and other of RH's stories to my children who love them. Thank you and god bless you Mr Hoban.