Elephants from the Sky

An orphan, Peter Augustus Duchene, wants to know where his sister is. His caretaker, the retired soldier Vilna Lutz claims that she died shortly after being born, but Peter has his nagging doubts. At the market one day he hands over Vilna Lutz's grocery money to a fortune teller who reveals two irreconcilable pieces of information: one, his sister is alive; two, an elephant will lead him to her.

Given the utter absence of elephants in his city of Baltese, Peter doesn't know whether to be filled with hope or ashamed of his foolishness until an elephant does arrive, conjured, half-accidentally, out of the sky, by a desperate stage magician.

Like the phenomenally successful Tale of Desperaux, Kate DiCamillo's latest book is a fairy tale told with simple poetic language from multiple points of view. In The Magician's Elephant a character which seems to merely add atmosphere to one scene will take over the story in the next. Each part of the tale is constructed perfectly to fit with the others. I'd say the story works like gears meshing together, but the narrative is so much more elegant than that. It's more like an elaborate folk dance.

While Peter remains at the center of the story the reader's sympathies connect with the wishes of so many other characters (including the elephant's) that the story relates the regrets and hopes of a whole fairy tale community. In the end it's a story of love of every kind except the romantic kind, and in that it is truly refreshing.

My only question is whether this really is a kids' book. It has a child as its protagonist and it's written using language that is fairly simple on the surface. And it is a fairy tale. But really Peter Augustus Duchene is more an adult-idealized child (damaged, innocent, unswervingly moral, and absolutely determined) than a child that real kids can relate to. Peter is the anti-Wimpy Kid.

So The Magician's Elephant might be described as a "crossover" book. But, if I am right that children will read this book only to indulge the adults in their lives, it just might step over the kid/adult line with all four elephant feet.

The Magician's Nephew is a Cybil Book Awards nominee.

Disclosure to please the FTC: My copy of The Magician's Nephew was borrowed from the Cleveland Heights Public Library with no strings attached. The image of The Magician's Elephant above, and in the side bar, is linked to the Amazon Affiliate program. I get a small commission from Amazon for books purchased on Amazon that were accessed through this link.