Allie the Allergic Elephant: A Children's Story of Peanut Allergies

by Nicole Smith

Allie the Allergic Elephant helps children learn about food allergies and how to be a good friend when you can't share snacks. Allie explains peanut allergies in a way that parents, teachers and children themselves can talk about allergies and understand them better.

Genres: Health

22 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 1999

About the author

Nicole Smith is the author of Allie the Allergic Elephant: A Children’s Story of Peanut Allergies and Cody the Allergic Cow: A Children’s Story of Milk Allergies and Chad the Allergic Chipmunk: A Children’s Story of Nut Allergies.

She and her husband, Robert, own Allergic Child Publishing Group, the publishing company for Allie, Cody and Chad.

Nicole has helped school districts across the United States manage food allergies and create safe environments for food allergic children. She was a founding member of her school district’s Food Allergy Task Force in 2007, which continues its mission today to assist students and families managing life threatening food allergies in Academy School District 20.

Reviews

[B. Factor · Rating 1 out of 5]

There's a big need for books that help young children understand food allergies, both their own and those of their classmates. Unfortunately this is not that book.

My gravest concern about this book is the five pages in the middle of the book that begin with "Oh no... Allie is having hives from the peanuts! Do you want to see Allie get hives?". This refrain is repeated for the symptoms "swelled lips", "red eyes", "itchy nose", and "coughing". Put that way, it would not be unreasonable for a curious child to answer, "Yes, I would like to see Allie get hives" because they've never seen hives before and the pictures in the book make hives look like a new kind of red finger paint. From this, it is only a question of time before children are rubbing each other with peanuts to see what hives look like. Our daughter has food allergies, and we'd rather that no classmate of hers is ever read this book.

The book concludes with, "[Allie:] just gets to eat food other than peanuts. And that makes Allie very special!" with a picture of Allie in an exalted state. Yes, severe food allergies make a child's life more difficult and more dangerous. But do they really make a child "in some way superior"? We would rather that our daughter built her identity on her truly special attributes rather than her limitations, so we won't be reading this book to her either.