Pom, the Elephant Who Could Only Whisper

Pom was a young elephant with the biggest trunk in the whole herd and the smallest voice.

When the other elephants trumpeted, the birds flew up out of the trees. When Pom trumpeted, a single leaf fell off, and even that might have been the wind.

"Louder, Pom!" said his aunties. "An elephant must be heard!"

Pom took the deepest breath an elephant can take. His trunk went up. His ears went out. And out came a sound like a mouse saying "excuse me."

The herd tried everything. They stood him on a hill. They gave him a drink of fizzy water, which made him hiccup in whispers for an hour. His cousin Biggles put a hollow log on the end of Pom's trunk to make it louder, and Pom's whisper came out the other end sounding like a whisper that had been for a long walk.

Then came the night of the Big Jungle Party, which happens once a year when the moon is as round as a melon. Every animal was invited, and every animal was loud. The monkeys whooped. The parrots shrieked. The hippos sang a song with no tune in it at all. The noise was so big that the party games kept going wrong.

"Pass the coconut!" shouted the zebra, and nobody heard, so nobody passed it, and the coconut sat there feeling left out.

"Musical mud puddles!" shouted the warthog, and nobody heard the music stop, so everyone kept dancing until the puddles dried up.

Pom stood at the edge of it all with his tiny voice and his enormous trunk, wearing a small yellow party hat that kept sliding over one eye.

Then the baby monkey began to cry. He had lost his mother in the noise, and the noise was too loud for anyone to hear him, and the more he cried the louder everyone else got, trying to help.

Pom walked over. He bent down very low. He curled his big trunk round the baby monkey like a cosy wall, so the noise stayed outside, and inside the wall he whispered.

"Hello," whispered Pom.

The baby monkey stopped crying at once, because nobody had ever whispered to him before. He leaned in to hear.

"Your mum is by the banana tree," whispered Pom. "I can see her from up here. Shall we go together?"

The baby monkey nodded. He climbed onto Pom's trunk, and Pom carried him across the party, and the monkey's mother was so happy that she whooped, which Pom did not do, because he could not.

But something had happened. The animals near the banana tree had seen the baby monkey lean in to listen. And when the zebra wanted to know what was going on, she leaned in too. Soon half the jungle was leaning in to hear what Pom the whispering elephant was saying, and when half a jungle leans in, the other half goes quiet to find out why.

"What's he saying?" hissed the warthog.

"Shh," hissed the hippos, who had stopped singing. "He's saying something quiet."

And he was. Pom was saying it was very late. He was saying the moon looked sleepy. He was saying that parties are lovely, but so is lying down.

Nobody argues with a whisper. One by one, the animals lay down in the warm dark, leaning in, just to hear the end.

Pom put his yellow hat over his eyes. "Goodnight, jungle," he whispered.

"Goodnight, Pom," the whole jungle whispered back, and for the first time in all its years, the Big Jungle Party ended with everybody fast asleep.