The Magician's Elephant (Reviewed by Lauren)

The Magician’s Elephant

By: Kate DiCamillo

“But it is –all of it –true,” [no, it’s really fiction and is not true]

The genre of this book is fiction because it is a made up story. It is about an orphan named Peter and his encounter with a fortune teller. Peter asked the fortune teller if his sister Adele was alive or not. The fortune teller said, “Yes.” Peter then went on an amazing adventure to find Adele. But the fortune teller said the only way to meet Adele was with the help of an elephant. Peter went to find the elephant and found that she [the elephant] was home sick. Finally, Peter needs the Magician to return the elephant back to its real home.

The strength of this book was that it was really easy to read in most chapters and it kept my interest. For example, I found it interesting when the elephant crashed through the opera house, fell on the noblewoman, and caused her to be in a wheelchair. The main weakness for me was that the book had some really hard words. For example, words like reluctance, subordinates, and lieutenants were hard to pronounce and I did not know the meaning at first. There are some more difficult words in the book, but those are some examples.

I recommend this book to 4th -5th graders. I rate this book four and one-half stars. This book was such an adventure. Kate DiCamillo is a wonderful author. She also wrote the book, The Tale of Desperaux, which I read before and liked very much. I am a Kate Dicomillo fan because she is a good author.