I kept forgetting that this was a children's book as I read it yesterday. And now, I am trying to imagine reading it with a child. I think the story, the language both are straightforward enough that children would "get it" at least on a literal level. Perhaps what makes a better than average children's book is if there is more there for adults to take away.
I think this one had that. The characters are richly drawn and believable within a make-believe story. The make-believe story is believable even if we must believe that an elephant falls through the roof of an opera house during a magic show and then ...
The magic gets better as the story draws to its climax!
One of my favorite parts is when the six year old main character, Peter, decides that war, "soldiering did not, in any way, seem like a man's work...Instead, it seemed like foolishness-a horrible, terrible, nightmarish foolishness." Peter says of it, "I look upon it and wish that it could be undone." Out of the mouths of babes...
Thank you, Kate DiCamillo. You did it again!
Mary Ann
I knew The Magician's Elephant was good because I wanted to keep reading. I think Peter is what kept me reading. There was something about him that communicated that he wasn't going to keep practicing being a soldier in that bedroom apartment, and waiting on that old delirious man. I think Kate DiCamillo filled this story with a bunch of not so attractive adults. That makes me start thinking back to the characters in her other stories. There might be a pattern here. In this story besides the soldier there is the miserable lady who got injured by the fall; the royal lady who held the elephant captive & on display, and even the policeman and wife who knew Peter's plight upstairs but seemed to do very little about it. And, how about the women of the orphanage: helpless and odd? It is the kids who have to rescue themselves in this story. But, at least the policeman and the demented sculptor saw the hope in Peter and listened. Without those two adults he could not have found his sister! So maybe that is why this would be a good children's book. The kids are empowered and win despite the adults. I agree that Kate DiCamillo did it again.
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