If I had an elephant by Richard Fairgray and Terry Jones

Before you read this book with a class why not use the title as a writing stimulus?

If I had an elephant ...  

Or you could use one illustration - they are wild.  Or just one line :

"If I had an elephant, his name would be Clarence and we'd get matching jackets. We'd sure feel silly when we got them mixed up!"

I guarantee the twist at the end of this book will make everyone smile.

You can read about the author and illustrator (not to be confused with Terry Jones from UK) who come from New Zealand here.  Here is a video interview with the author.  We have three books by this team in our school library.

I would follow this tall tale with Alistair's time machine, Just another ordinary day and Billy Twitters and his Blue whale problem.