The Magician's Elephant by Kate diCamillo
Candlewick
Press, 2009. ISBN 9780763644109.
(Ages 9+) Highly
recommended. This
beautifully written fable, the story of Peter,
brought up by an old, befuddled soldier, but all the time dreaming of
his
sister, will tug at the heart strings of all readers. Peter's mother
died at
the birth of his sister, and he remembers holding the baby and
promising his
mother he would look after her. But the soldier, an army friend of his
dead
father, reminds him that his sister was still born. Peter cannot shake
off the
idea his sister is alive, and when a fortune teller comes to the town,
he uses
the florin given him by the soldier for their meager tea, to ask the
fortune
teller about his sister. He is told she is alive and will find her
through an
elephant.
This
extraordinary piece of news, the first of many
extraordinary things which occur through this story, has Peter reeling
at the
news that an elephant has dropped through the ceiling of the local
opera house,
causing pandemonium. The magician who conjured the elephant has been
thrown
into jail, and when Peter visits the elephant, he is touched by her
sadness of
being separated from her family. So Peter acts, bringing all the
protagonists
together in a final act which sees the elephant returned, the magician
released, Peter and Adele reunited and both the children with a loving
family.
A superbly
told story of imaging the unimaginable, of
hoping against all hope for your dreams to come true, this is one of
those
stories that will pass from hand to hand, rarely left on the
shelves.
Fran Knight