Elephant Soup by Ingrid and Dieter Schubert

A small mouse is feeling sad. He knows the best way to cheer himself up is to gather is friends, grab his biggest cooking pot and mix up a big batch of elephant soup! His friends bring all the veggies, fill the enormous pot with water and build up the fire. Meanwhile our little hero sets off to catch an elephant using is trusty lasso. The team of mice then give the huge elephant a good scrub so that he is clean ready to go in the pot. 

At this point the elephant looks very happy. The water in the pot is warm - rather like a huge bathtub but then the mice add a lid to their pot and the elephant decides this is all too much, so he tips the pot of water and veggies over and heads off.  The mice can see the elephant is very unhappy so they gather around and invite him to return. Their soup might be ruined but that pot makes a perfect swimming pool complete with an elephant trunk waterspout.

I am a huge fan of books by Ingrid and Deiter Schubert ever since I discovered the book Little Big Feet. I think Elephant soup is now out of print even though it was only published in 2019. The library where I found this copy were able to buy it from a bargain book seller for only AUS$8 so you might be lucky and find a copy somewhere. Elephant Soup has only one line of text on each page - a perfect book to share with a preschool child or to read alongside Wombat Stew. 

Elephant Soup was originally published in The Netherlands with the title Olifanten-soep. I usually see the Schubert's book published by North South but this one is from Lemniscaat. 

Ingrid Schubert (born 29 March 1953 in Essen, West Germany) is a Dutch author and illustrator of children's books and picture books. After studying (free painting) at the Art Academy of Münster (Germany), she and Dieter Schubert received a scholarship to the Rietveld Academy. In response to a remark by Piet Klaasse, they started working on a picture book together. The result was There is a crocodile under my bed! (1980). Although they make most of the books together, Dieter Schubert received a Golden Brush for the only book with only his name on it - Monkie (1986). When asked what characterizes their work, Ingrid Schubert says: "The subtle jokes, if I may say so. Sometimes you have to look three times until you see the details that we have put into the drawing with great pleasure. But also our accuracy."