Tarra and Bella

To go along with our elephant unit is a book called, Tarra and Bella. It is a book about an elephant and a dog who are best friends. I chose to use this as a read-aloud for my kids on the first day of our elephant unit. Both Benjamin and Kate loved the story.

At the end of the book, I noticed a website for the elephant sanctuary at which this all took place. So, spur of the moment, we made this book a lot more realistic. We went to the website and saw that there was a live elephant cam. There was no sign of Tarra or Bella (although I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the elephants anyway), but we did get to see one elephant walking around in view of the camera. I then decided to try and find some videos of Tarra and Bella on Youtube. What I found was a ton of different videos of the two animals playing side by side. Ben and Kate loved that they got to see these videos and see the animals from the book. There was mention of Bella (the dog) recently passing away... I have to admit it made me a little sad...

It's been a couple of weeks and Ben is still talking about Tarra and Bella. There was one video of the two animals playing in the snow that Ben especially liked. We have watched it again and again. 

Overall, it's a cute story that would be great for a variety of themes. Go to youtube and search for Tarra and Bella... I think it is totally worth it.