Just So Stories

UWA Publishing

Simon & Schuster

July 2026

ISBN13: 9781760803377

LIST PRICE: AU$ 17.99 / NZ$ 20.99

Your middle grade readers, particularly the animal lovers or indeed the historical fiction lovers, will lap this one up. Inspired by a true story of an amazing rescue during WWII in Burma, now Myanmar, this is an elephant story that will inspire readers and confirm our own knowledge about the high intelligence and the nature of elephants. James Howard Williams, known as Elephant Bill, was born in 1857 in England, the same year that a young elephant calf was born in Burma.

Po Toke, the man who cared for Bandoola’s mother, a working elephant in the teak logging industry, raised the calf and together he and Williams set up an elephant school. To stop the previous cruel methods of taming wild elephants to work, their idea was to raise the calves and train them humanely. Given Bandoola was an exceptionally intelligent first pupil this became the new norm.

But when the Second World War threatened the entire operation and the people involved, Williams, Po Toke and Bandoola led an extraordinary escape across rugged and difficult terrain to reach Assam, refusing to abandon the elephants which would have made this easier.  64 women and children, 53 elephants, 40 armed soldiers, 90 elephant trainers and their assistants, and four British military officers made the journey through 190 kilometres of perilous jungle and towering mountains to safety. [BookTrust UK].

Beverley McWilliams has fictionalised the story of Bandoola and this narrative is told from his PoV from a rather mischievous but highly intelligent calf to the exceptional animal entrusted to lead this extraordinary exodus.

Young readers will thoroughly enjoy Bandoola’s often naughty antics as he grows up but will become deeply interested in the history of both the war and the country, as well as its impact on the ordinary people along with the soldiers who helped to protect them and move them to safety. It is a story with strong themes of love, loyalty, dedication, trust and self-sacrifice and is told in such a way as to make all this extremely palatable and easily digested by the audience.

For those of us who love elephants and truly regard them as exceptional animals, it is yet another affirmation. For children who are, as yet, unacquainted with the superior intelligence, loyalty and familial connections elephants have, it will be a revelation. It is an easily decided 5 🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘rating from me.