The Magician's Elephant

Do you know that feeling when you pick up a book and your heart sinks before you even turn the first page? It's that feeling of realizing that you have picked up something beautiful — and before you know it, you will have plowed through it and it's over. Thus is The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo.

Each of Kate DiCamillo's books is amazing in its own right. I came to know her with Because of Winn Dixie (although her first was Tiger Rising). Since then I have read each of her books almost immediately upon publication. (I'm a big fan of Amazon's Pre-Order, what can I say?) DiCamillo is always a good writer, but her writing still seems to improve with each book. Her most recent book, The Magician's Elephant, published last month, takes her writing to a different level. It is almost like reading poetry, and I cannot even begin to tell you how beautiful it is. Gobsmackingly beautiful, really. Several times I found myself reading, and then re-reading, certain passages just trying to take it all in.

The story takes place in Baltese — a very cold and very dark European city. And it is about a little boy named Peter Augustus Duchene. Peter's father was killed during the war, and his mother died shortly thereafter while giving birth to Peter's little sister, who Peter believes to be dead. This is why we find Peter being raised by the old, sick, sometimes senile, military man Vilna Lutz, who wants Peter to grow up to be a soldier.

On his way to buy their meager dinner one night, Peter spots a stand belonging to a fortune-teller. After a great internal debate, he goes in and hands over the little money intended for dinner in exchange for the answer to his question: his sister is alive and he must follow the elephant. Peter is dumbfounded; not only because he was lied to all those years ago, but also because there is not, nor was there ever, an elephant in the city.

'Peter stepped out of the tent. The sky was gray and heavy with clouds,
but everywhere people talked and laughed. Vendors shouted and children
cried and a beggar with a black dog at his side stood in the center of it all
and sang a song about the darkness.'

Meanwhile, a magician has come to town. During his performance at the opera house he conjures an elephant, instead of the intended lilies, out of nowhere. The elephant falls into the lap of a noblewoman leaving her crippled. The magician then goes to jail — and so does the elephant. A day or so later, Peter hears this story of an elephant falling through the ceiling and everything begins to change.

The cast of characters that emerges in The Magician's Elephant is extraordinary. Beyond Peter and Vilna Lutz there are: Adele, Peter's sister who lives in an orphanage in the city; Leo Matienne, the police officer, and his wife Gloria; Sister Marie, from the Sisters of Perpetual Light Orphanage; Madame LaVaughn, the injured noblewoman, who can say almost nothing except: 'But perhaps you do not understand. I was crippled by an elephant! Crippled by an elephant that came through the roof!'; the beggar, who can turn anything he hears into a beautiful song, and the blind dog, who has befriended him; Bartok Whynn, the contorted and twisted man who only laughs and laughs after his terrible accident (while carving a gargoyle atop a building, he fell to what should have been his death), and now has the unfortunate job of standing behind the elephant, with a shovel, in order to keep things clean; and, last but not least, the elephant. These characters, as different as they may be, are all dependent upon each other — whether they realize it or not.

We are allowed into the thoughts of each of these characters, including the blind dog and the elephant. We are even allowed into their dreams. What the characters dream at night is immensely important (and very poignant) to the story as a whole, further illustrating how we are all so much more intertwined than we sometimes realize. And this is just one of the many messages of the book. The book is about much more than hope and dreams though. The Magician's Elephant is also about having a great deal of faith, even when the stars seem to be aligning against you. Its message is that you can achieve anything if you have enough faith. And perhaps a bit of kindness and love wouldn't hurt either.

(The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Yoko Tanaka, Candlewick Press, 2009.)