"Young readers will find admirable qualities in Jacob, as he perseveres through months of thirst, hunger, bloody wounds wrapped in leaves, walking many miles from grasslands through blistering sand, and escaping ravenous crocodiles while crossing rivers to reach safety. The author includes interviews and a glossary that further explain how the story came to be written. This book puts into perspective the peace and educational opportunities that readers enjoy."
— Foreword Magazine

"Teens will be moved by the unsparing survival story and the climax, when Jacob learns to read."
— Booklist

"A Hare in the Elephant's Trunk is an incredible story. . . As a compelling story of the lives of war-affected children, it certainly has a place in middle-school.
Highly Recommended."
— CM Magazine

"An important and well-written story. Jan Coates takes the reader deep into the lives of children dealing with the uproar of war and terror - a strong reminder that the world needs to do better."
— Deborah Ellis

"Jan Coates has succeeded wonderfully with A Hare in the Elephant's Trunk. She gives the reader an uncomfortably vivid sense of what it must be like to lose one's home and family, to wander aimlessly through a bleak and blasted landscape, in constant danger of starving or being shot. Such desperate circumstances could have led her young protagonist, Jacob, to become bitter, to resort to violence himself. And, working with such material, Coates could have written a very dark and despairing sort of book. But both the author and her characters rise above the situation and find in it an unexpected wealth of humour and humanity and hope."
— Gary L. Blackwood, author of The Shakespeare Stealer, The Great Race, The Just-So Woman, and Second Sight