Review by New York Times Review
KATE DICAMILLO'S new book, "The Magician's Elephant," though intended for young readers, has enough, and then more, of weird parable and enigmatic puzzle about it to bring it into the Borges precincts, if not right into the heart of Calvino country. A magician, working in the old city of Baltese - a Central European town perfectly evoked by DiCamillo's sentences ("the small shops with their crooked tiled roofs, and the pigeons who forever perched atop them, singing sad songs that did not quite begin and never truly ended") and Yoko Tanaka's chiaroscuro drawings - has made a comic and sinister mistake. Intending to call down a bouquet of lilies in a concluding trick, he has instead summoned an elephant, who crashes through the roof of the opera house to land in the lap of a rich woman named Madam LaVaughn, paralyzing her. The magician is arrested and imprisoned, while the elephant is at first detained and then displayed in the chateau of the local countess, where she is cared for by a "bent and twisted" mason named Bartok Whynn, who was injured in a cathedral accident. The elephant becomes the talk of the town, and the pages in which DiCamillo catalogs Baltese elephant mania are among the funniest and most charming in the book. ("The street vendors sold, for exorbitant prices, chunks of plaster that had fallen onto the stage when the elephant made her dramatic appearance. 'Cataclysm!' The vendors snouted. 'Mayhem! Possess the plaster of disaster!'") Then, through the work of strange dreams and associations, the elephant becomes the centerpiece in the longings of an assortment of seemingly unrelated and lonely people: a fatherless boy training to be a soldier; a girl - could it be his lost sister? - in an orphanage; an old lady and a blind ex-army dog. The true matter of the story is the slow interweaving of this thwarted and longing group, who will come together around the elephant on a snowy night. All of this might seem oddly gray and heavy material to land in the laps of children, even fans of DiCamillo's sad and smoky earlier books. And, to be sure, though "The Magician's Elephant" offers pleasures for the nighttime readaloud - chiefly in the variety of accents it demands for the many nicely distinguished voices - it is more a book for quiet corners and Christmas evenings than for bedtimes. DiCamillo writes here in a register entirely her own, catching not the whimsical-fabulous note of earlier masters for young readers, nor the jokeyrealistic one that has too often taken its place, but instead a mood of sober magic that unfolds into something that can be called, without pejorative, "sentimental," meaning straightforward and heartfelt. The style may evoke Calvino, but the substance belongs to Christmas. Though the spell the story casts depends on its grasp of human cruelty (both the blind dog and the boy have in different ways been wounded by war), when at last the participants are memorialized in a cathedral relief - "Each person has a hold of the other, each one is connected to the one before him" - we feel in the presence of a bright, reassuring truth about community. A dull but significant book might be written on the attraction, here as elsewhere recently in children's literature, of this particular fantasy cityscape: the Middle European town with its culture of soldiers and countesses and traveling magicians and long service to the emperor. Perhaps we now share a knowledge, implicit but never entirely articulated, that these tragic invisible cities, darkened by history, have become the perfect setting for modern fables. But however much truth that study might contain, the magic of DiCamillo's stories is that while they have the dignity of literature, they're never unduly "literary." Young readers are caught up in the fable before they know they are being fabulized at, trapped in the poetry of the allegory without any idea that allegories are set as traps by authors. 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. Her faith in her own images (an elephant in snowfall in twilight) has once again given us a light but potent fable, and a moral: we are all alone, and sometimes it takes the untimely appearance of an elephant to bring us together. Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new children's book, "The Steps Across the Water," will come out next year.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 6, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*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 fablelike tale from the author of the Newbery-winning Tale of Despereaux (2003). In DiCamillo's fifth novel, a young orphan named Peter Augustus Duchene suspects that the sibling he long thought dead is actually alive. Peter seeks out the services of a fortune-teller, who informs him that his younger sister, Adele, lives and even more astoundingly that an elephant will lead him to her. The winter-worn city of Baltese seems the last place Peter could expect to find such an exotic creature, but that very night a magician performing at the local opera house conjures one out of thin air, a wondrous but cataclysmic event that proves to have dire consequences. When the displaced elephant is put on public display, Peter is so stirred by her obvious suffering that he is compelled to risk the one chance he has of finding Adele to set things right. Although the novel explores many of the same weighty issues as DiCamillo's previous works, characters here face even more difficult hurdles, including the loss of loved ones, physical disabilities, and the cost of choices made out of desperation and fear. 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? Tanaka's charming black-and-white acrylic illustrations have a soft, period feel that perfectly matches the tone of this spellbinding story.--McKulski, Kristen Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In DiCamillo's fifth novel, a clairvoyant tells 10-year-old Peter, an orphan living with a brain-addled ex-soldier, that an elephant will lead him to his sister, who the ex-soldier claims died at birth. The fortuneteller's prediction seems cruelly preposterous as there are no pachyderms anywhere near Baltese, a vaguely eastern European city enduring a bitter winter. Then that night at the opera house, a magician "of advanced years and failing reputation" attempts to conjure a bouquet of lilies but instead produces an elephant that crashes through the ceiling. Peter learns that both magician and beast have been jailed, and upon first glimpse of the imprisoned elephant, Peter realizes that his fate and the elephant's are linked. 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. Ages 8-13. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-On a perfectly ordinary day, Peter Augustus Duchene goes to the market square of the city of Baltese. Instead of buying the fish and bread that his guardian, Vilna Lutz, has asked him to procure, he uses the coin to pay a fortune-teller to get information about his sister, whom he believes to be dead. He is told that she is alive, and that an elephant will lead him to her. That very night at a performance in the town's opera house, a magician conjures up an elephant (by mistake) that crashes through the roof and cripples the society dame she happens to land on. The lives of the boy, his guardian, and the local policeman, along with the magician and his unfortunate victim, as well as a beggar, his dog, a sculptor, and a nun all intertwine in a series of events triggered by the appearance of the elephant. Miraculous events resolve not only the mystery of the whereabouts of Peter's sister, but also the deeper needs of all of the individuals involved. 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. This is a book that demands to be read aloud.-Tim Wadham, St. Louis County Library, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) DiCamillo's allegorical novel seems to pack more mass per square inch than average. The plot is fantastical, surreal: in the fictional Old World city of Baltese, orphaned Peter searches for his sister (whom he has long thought dead), having been instructed by a fortuneteller to "follow the elephant." Against all odds, there is an elephant: conjured up by a magician by accident, it has landed on a woman's lap, crippling her. As DiCamillo expands her premise, she adds more and more characters to her cast ( la The Mouse and His Child), from a singing beggar to a countess to an old soldier fixated on war. The book's theme is the triumph of hope over despair, as Peter's belief that the "world is broken and it cannot be fixed" eventually gives way to a belief in possibility ("What if? Why not? Could it be?") -- familiar territory for this author (The Tale of Despereaux, rev. 9/03; The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, rev. 3/06). But its manifestation here is unusually varied, from homey (a nourishing soup Peter's new mother feeds him) to ecstatic (a nun's dream of flying over a glowing Earth). And the prose is remarkable, reflecting influences from Kafka to the theater of the absurd to Laurel-and-Hardy humor. Even DiCamillo's characters influence the language: in scenes revolving around the self-important countess, the prose becomes verbose, repetitive, full of embedded parentheses. The novel's virtuosity, however, creates a distance between book and reader that may confound the author's fans. This may not be a crowd-pleaser, but it's an impressive addition to the DiCamillo canon. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Ten-year-old Peter Augustus Duchene goes to the market for fish and bread but spends it at the fortuneteller's tent instead. Seeking his long-lost sister, Peter is told, "You must follow the elephant. She will lead you there." And that very night at the Bliffenendorf Opera House, a magician's spell goes awry, conjuring an elephant that crashes through the ceiling and lands on Madam Bettine LaVaughn. 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. Brilliant imagery juxtaposes "glowering and resentful" gargoyles and snow, stars and the glowing earth, and Tanaka's illustrations (not all seen) bring to life the city and characters from "the end of the century before last." A quieter volume than The Tale of Despereaux (2003) and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (2006), this has an equal power to haunt readers long past the final page. (Fantasy. 8-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
