What kind of children's book can make a grown man cry? This one.
When I asked what made my friend Matt cry, I was told by his wife, ?Well, it was the part when...? No, not when, what? Why? Why this story? ?Well it's about forgiveness, it's about redemption.? Wait a minute...I thought it was about hope. It is.
If there is a DiCamillo signature style it is that she trusts the reader to find the story, to make their own meaning. She came out of the gate a champion, garnering a Newbery Honor for her first book Because of Winn Dixie. The Tale of Despereaux won the Newbery Medal, the highest award in children's fiction. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was a National Book Award finalist and stirred up quite a controversy in children's literature circles because of its main character, a self-centered china rabbit on a downward spiral.
Children do not need to be convinced of DiCamillo's magic. Each book, from the slapstick humor of the toast-obsessed pig Mercy Watson to the painfully complicated lives of the early adolescents of Tiger Rising, casts a spell.
I have always felt that adults could, should, and would enjoy her novels for their lyrical language and for their multilayered texts. All of DiCamillo's books tackle big themes -- love, friendship, loyalty, commitment, redemption and courage. I have pressed copies of Because of Winn Dixie into the hands of many adult friends and acquaintances. My husband once leaped from a restaurant in mid-meal to buy a copy from a nearby bookstore, convinced that our friend should not leave the table without it.
The Magician's Elephant is most reminiscent of the timeless works of Hans Christian Andersen, set in an artfully familiar, vaguely European storybook village. In this ?once-upon-a- time? land, there lives an orphaned boy, Peter Augustus Duchene, who resides with an old soldier in an attic room above the home of a childless policeman and his wife. There is a beggar with a blind dog, a nun who sits at the door of an orphanage, a girl who lives at the orphanage, and an imperious countess. There is also a magician who dreams of greatness, a stone carver, a noblewoman, and of course, the elephant from the title. With her economy of language and dry wit, DiCamillo seamlessly weaves these seemingly disparate denizens together to create her tale's tapestry.
Although the phrase ?cognitive dissonance? would mean nothing to most ten-year-olds, there is no child who has not wrestled with the uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. DiCamillo begins her tale with the protagonist in the throes of such agony. A fortune teller has told him that the infant sister he had thought was dead is alive.
If Peter Augustus Duchene believed that his sister Adele was alive then he had been lied to by his guardian, the soldier Vilna Lutz. But the honorable man who raised him must have been telling the truth. Yet, as he lay in bed that night, his thoughts chase each other:
He lies; she lies; he lies; she lies. Someone lies, I know not who. If she lies, I am a fool but if he lies, my sister is alive. His heart thumped. If he lies, then Adele lives. "I hope he lies." said Peter aloud to the darkness. And his heart, started at such treachery, astonished at the voicing aloud of such an unsoldierly sentiment, thumped again, much harder this time.
Across town, a ?magician of advanced years and failing reputation performed the most astonishing magic of his career.? This mediocre performer astonishes himself as well as the audience when he conjures a living elephant that crashes through the ceiling of the opera house, crushing a noblewoman's legs. ?The magician stood next to the enormous beast and gloried in the smell of her -- dried apples, moldy paper, dung." Later, he repeatedly claims that he meant only to produce lilies.
The plot arises out of these interlocking mysteries with an effortless urgency -- will Peter find his sister? Will the magician be imprisoned forever? Will the elephant ever find her way home? As we anxiously witness the unfolding events, a refrain is heard from the young policeman. Leo Matienne asks repeatedly these unanswerable questions, ?What if? Why not? Could it be??
And here we are again with my friend Matt. The main theme of the book, implicit in Leo's poignant "Why not?," is hope -- hope in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Early on Peter decides that ?that it is a terrible and complicated thing to hope, and that it might be easier, instead, to despair.? Yet in the fine tradition of the fairy tale, there are convenient coincidences and friends found in unlikely places that spark a bit of hope.
As in her prior works, DiCamillo does much more than spin a tale -- she begs us to not give up, to see beyond the fear and distress of the moment and to resist the temptation to throw up our hands ten minutes before the miracle happens. She shows that forgiveness comes when we to bravely own up to our very human failings, that we are trapped in our misery if we are like the magician who cannot admit that he really did want to perform an astounding feat.
DiCamillo's prose remains masterfully evocative, painting such clear images in the mind that one would think illustrations superfluous. But Yoko Tamaka's paintings accompanying the text accentuate the fairy-tale atmosphere, helping establish an otherworldly -- not now, not then -- dreamlike feeling. The pleasures of the book as a physical object, delightful to hold and behold, have not been scanted either. How wonderful it is in this age of digital delivery, to revel in the comfortingly old-fashioned typeface set on heavy stock.
Matt the grown-up reader was right. The Magician's Elephant is a profound work of hope and redemption -- a story about regaining what was lost and about forgiveness. Children will enjoy a magical tale, and grown-ups will discover a spiritual one. They both will find exactly what they need. --Lisa Von Drasek
Lisa Von Drasek is the children's Librarian at the Bank Street College of Education. Her reviews and commentary have appeared in School Library Journal, The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, The Bark, Knowledge Quest, Teaching K-8, Nick Jr., and more.
Kate DiCamillo has a gift, inequitably distributed among writers of all kinds, of eliminating the obvious and still egging on the reader. She writes beautifully but thinks simply. The purity of her prose – the reader goes from paragraph to paragraph delighting in the wonderful simple sentences – only adds to the winsome purity of her vision.
—New York Times Book Review
DiCamillo’s carefully crafted prose creates an evocative aura of timelessness for a story that is, in fact, timeless. Tanaka’s acrylic artwork is meticulous in detail and aptly matches the tone of the narrative.
—School Library Journal (starred review)
Reading like a fable told long ago, with rich language that begs to be read aloud, this is a magical story about hope and love, loss and home, and of questioning the world versus accepting it as it is.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
From the unexpectedly miraculous feats of a two-bit illusionist to the transformative powers of love, forgiveness, and a good mutton stew, there is much magic afoot in this fable-like tale… The profound and deeply affecting emotions at work in the story are buoyed up by the tale’s succinct, lyrical text, gentle touches of humor, and uplifting message of redemption, hope, and the interminable power of asking ‘what if?
—Booklist (starred review)
Thoughtful readers will feel a quiet satisfaction with this almost dainty tale of impossible happenings.
—VOYA
DiCamillo’s allegorical novel seems to pack more mass per square inch than average. The plot is fantastical, surreal…And the prose is remarkable, reflecting influences from Kafka to the theater of the absurd to Laurel-and-Hardy humor.
—The Horn Book
The mannered prose and Tanaka's delicate, darkly hued paintings give the story a somber and old-fashioned feel. The absurdist elements—street vendors peddle chunks of the now-infamous opera house ceiling with the cry “Possess the plaster of disaster!”—leaven the overall seriousness, and there is a happy if predictable ending for the eccentric cast of anguished characters, each finding something to make them whole.
—Publishers Weekly
Kate DiCamillo tells a tale of ‘hope, redemption, faith, love, and believing in the impossible’ with her usual quiet elegant prose.
—Library Media Connection
Tanaka’s shadowy, evocative acrylic paintings echo the dreamy nature of the storytelling and add a surprising amount of solidity (and a particularly nice elephant).
—Bulletin of the Center of Children’s Books
With its rhythmic sentences and fairy-tale tone, this novel yields solitary pleasures but begs to be read aloud. Hearing it in a shared space can connect us, one to one, regardless of age, much like the book's closing image: a small stone carving, hands linked, of the elephant's friends.
—Washington Post Book World
Though DiCamillo's first success was with realistic fiction, she has since explored fantasy, here looking at how individuals and society take an impossible event into their narrative of the way the world is. Is it broken or fixable by those who embrace the unusual?
—Chicago Tribune
DiCamillo's elegant, evocative prose underpins the otherworldliness of Baltese, a place where a long-accepted truth can be shattered as easily as an elephant crashes through the opera-house ceiling.
—Austin American-Statesman
Readers willing to venture a little deeper into the darkness will be reassured and rewarded by the singular sense of hope that nearly glows from DiCamillo's prose, and from the incandescent illustrations created by Yoko Tanaka.
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
The power of DiCamillo’s writing enables the hope and determination of the characters to break through the gloom that penetrates the story...DiCamillo has again captured the loneliness and unwavering optimism that can only be found in children.
—Foreword
Using short yet powerful sentences and cinematic descriptions, DiCamillo creates another emotion-swelling gem in what is becoming an impressive crown of work.
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
Lyrical language and many interesting characters make this a wonderful read aloud book or one to be savored alone.
—Kansas City Star
Bringing all these characters together for a happy ending requires its own special magic, which is enhanced by DiCamillo's finely rendered Old World writing style — and the gorgeously muted pencil illustrations of Los Angeles artist Yoko Tanaka.
—Los Angeles Times
Gr 4–6—When a fortuneteller informs Peter Augustus Duchene, a 10-year-old orphan, that his younger sister is alive, a magical tale unfolds, interweaving the lives of unusual of characters including an elephant that inexplicably crashes through the roof of the opera house as a result of a magic trick gone wrong. This sometimes mysterious and shadowy, but ultimately hopeful tale reminds us that even in the darkest of times, all is not lost. Written by Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo, this superb tale (Candlewick, 2009) is another example of her exceptional storytelling skills. Juliet Stevenson brings the haunting tale to life with a brilliant repertoire of voices that creates the illusion of a multicast performance. This tale is meant to be listened to and is sure to be appreciated and treasured by listeners.—Amy Joslyn, Fairport Public Library, NY
