I am ambiguous about this book. I don't like the story but the paper art is terrific.
This is the story of Ollie the elephant, who is unhappy on his birthday despite having had a party with lots of presents. Right away Ollie strikes me as a little ingrate. He's unhappy because he got skates but what he really wants is a baby brother. When his mom tells him this is an unreasonable request, Ollie leaves. He meets a variety of animals and asks each to give him a sibling or accept him into their family -- a stork, a deer, a frog, a cat, a badger family, a mother and child kangaroo, a peacock, a bat and a woodpecker. Ollie's goals shift fluidly -- he wants a baby brother, he wants to find his mother, he wants to find his roller skates -- and confusedly. We never see the skates lost, for instance, don't know where they are, and then just as suddenly Ollie has found them again. I know that doesn't sound like much, but the story is vaguely incoherent; likewise, interactions with the other animals are disjointed and inconsistent. Ollie is gone for multiple days (!) and at one point he calls his mother but she never comes. Kind of a bleak message for a little kid's story. When he is just about to find his mother, Ollie gets so excited that he crashes into a tree and wakes up in a hospital with a broken leg! When he's recovered a bit his mom tells him he is indeed going to have a baby brother or sister. Ollie limps back to bed and dreams of being an older sibling. So that's the resolution? This is one goofy book.
On the other hand, the artwork is very fine and there are some unique and interesting paper engineering feats. I guess I would never buy this book for its own sake. There must be a lot of books that deal with the issue of siblings better than this. But it's a clever and pleasing pop-up.