Elmer the Elephant tackles climate change as late author’s son shares unfinished tale

ELMER the patchwork elephant will be joined by a lost polar bear in a story written by late author and illustrator David Mckee to help parents discuss climate change with their children.

The writer had been working on the manuscript shortly before he died in April 2022 after becoming concerned about the climate crisis.

The draft and rough sketches were found by his son, Chuck Mckee, just days after his death.

“So many people wanted to use Elmer as a mascot – so many organisations – and he never wanted that to happen, because Elmer belongs to everybody,” Mr Mckee told the Observer.

“So the idea of doing something, of making a statement with Elmer about climate change, was a first for him.”

Mr Mckee said he had found the draft of Elmer and the White Bear as he sifted through his father’s archive.

“I sat down at his work desk to go through his papers,” he said.

“There was stuff all over it. He’d pick up bills and doodle on them. You could see where conversations were going, you could follow things through, at what point he was going on to something else; a block of paint would suddenly start becoming a face and a body and breaking into something.”

He found handwritten pieces of paper with a story written on it, corresponding to numbered thumbnail sketches drawn in black ink.

“When I came across the sketches, laid out page by page, I realised that he had a book going on,” he added.

The story follows Elmer and his cousin Wilbur as they meet a white bear in the jungle who is trying to find his way home after floating from the frozen north on a scrap of melting ice.

“I love where I live,” the bear tells the elephants, explaining that he is lost in the jungle “because of global warming. The world getting warmer”.

The final draft was labelled “Elmer + White Bear: 7th version.”

Mr Mckee said he believed his father was inspired to write the story during the summer 2021 heatwave, when he was stuck in Provence, France, because of Covid travel restrictions.

The writer, who died aged 87, also created Mr Benn and King Rollo.