Review: The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Candlewick Press, 2009

Peter Augustus Duchene, a boy orphaned by war and the dangers of childbirth, does not expect to find a fortune-teller’s tent in the marketplace.  No one (except the fortune teller) expects an elephant to come through the roof of the opera house.  The characters of this story have grown past expectation, and in some cases past hope.  When the tent, and then the elephant appear, an impossible flicker of hope is ignited within Peter.  “Peter had a terrible feeling that the whole of his life had been nothing but standing and knocking, asking to be let into someplace that he was not even certain existed.”  He knocks, and the response touches an unlikely cast of characters he meets along his way. 

An ailing old soldier ashamed by a choice.  A frustrated magician ambitious to do something great.  A noblewoman unable to forgive.  An open-minded police-officer willing to hope.  A woman with a hearty stew and a loving heart.  A sculptor with a broken back and a broken humor.  A town wrapped in a bleak winter.  All stuck in a series of moments.  

Peter lives in a stark world, but DiCamillo renders it gently, and every word feels chosen with care.  As with  novels such as The Tale of Despereaux, Tiger Rising, and Because of Winn-Dixie, DiCamillo captures the essential and communicates it simply without being simplistic or condescending.  Yoko Tanaka’s drawings accentuate this gentle simplicity, adding their own touch of magic to the story.  

I had planned to include a discussion of this book with the recent post on Julia Child and Laura Esquivel because of a lovely scene in which Gloria, Peter’s neighbor and Leo’s wife, feeds Peter some stew.  Tanaka said in an interview about the book, “Peter’s frozen mind is melted by his conversation with Leo and Gloria—and by Gloria’s stew.”  The book left me feeling so warm and hopeful though, that I knew I had to give it more attention.  

Read The Magician’s Elephant.  Read it to someone else.  And encourage others to read it.

My favorite lines:

Leo, the police officer, asks, “What if?  Why not?  Could it be?”

“…an elephant was a ridiculous answer to any question—but a particularly ridiculous answer to a question posed by the human heart.”

“the truth is forever changing”

“‘Magic is always impossible,’ said the magician.  ‘It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between.  That is why it is magic.’”