Book Review - The Magician's Elephant

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Read aloud to the 5yo, 7yo and 9yo

The Good

An excellent read-aloud format with short chapters that, while they merge together well if longer reading is desired, are also distinct enough to work well as a shorter read.  This novel would be excellent for multiple ages - younger children will enjoy the magical story that ends happily, older children will enjoy the mystery and fantastical world.

The Bad

Kate DiCamillo is an acquired taste.  I could see some children finding her sad or depressing or dark, and in a lot of ways I suppose this is accurate.  She encorporates a darker theme to her writing that is often absent from children's literature.  This story takes place in winter, the characters are cold, the wind is icy, and an orphan hears from a fortune teller that his little sister is still alive, even though she was very premature and he had been told she was stillborn.  The fortune teller also tells him that he can find her...if he follows the elephant.  But, he wonders, WHAT elephant?  And then we hear of a failed magician who somehow conjures an elephant, who falls from the sky, through the roof of an opera house, and paralyzes a noblewoman.  The magician is imprisoned in a dark cell looking up at a single star, the elephant is shackled by the legs in the ballroom of a local society lady, the boy's guardian is feverish and ill, his downstairs neighbour's yearning for a child they will never have, the little sister stuck, hungry, in an orphanage.  You can see how this story could, quite quickly, be very, very sad.  And it IS sad.  It is cold and haunting.  But it is also those things in the same way that a classical fairy tale is those things.  There is real trouble, and simply because the story is 'for children', DiCamillo makes no concession to a naive and rose coloured world.  If you haven't read DiCamillo before, I really suggest a quick read first before reading it to the children, just to make sure you and your littles are up for it.

My Thoughts

DiCamillo's trademark melancholy magical realism is in full swing in this novel, which is not her best known (I feel like that honour would have to go to The Tale Of Despereaux, but that being said none of her work is trendy).  Much like her other stories, this one explores serious concepts seen through younger eyes - in this case the story asks us to consider if lying to save another's feelings is justified, if true courage means behaving like a soldier, how to save something that cannot save itself, and what family means to us.  And yet, despite these very deep and somewhat troubling ideas, the novel is very gentle and innocent; this is very much a child's story.  DiCamillo is undoubtedly a modern storyteller in the lineage of the great recorders of fairy tales - she doesn't believe, as so many current authors seem to, that children either cannot handle big topics at all, or that if they can they must be introduced to these topics in harsh, unyielding ways.  The dark war scenes and desperate poverties are missing from her tales, but none of the lessons are ever lost with them.  The book is for ages 8-13, but my 7yo liked it the best of the three children.  The chapters were short and simple to read and there are full-page black and white illustrations (in the style of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, although the illustrator is Yoko Tanaka).