Monday, April 12, 2010

Review: The Magician's Elephant

Kristin Cashore recommended The Magician's Elephant, by Kate DeCamillo, on her blog. Yeah, I know. If Cashore tells the interwebs to read a book, I'm going to read it.

In fairness, I didn't LOVE Knowledge of Angels, but I agree with her that it was riveting.

I did, however, love The Magician's Elephant.

It is, unsurprisingly, about a Magician and an Elephant. But it's mostly about a small boy, and the things that happen when he dares to hope. It's relatively short, but every word and every sentence seemed somehow exactly right. In the same way that Mozart sounds right, and vaguely inevitable.

The copy I had from the library was hardbound, and I don't know enough about paper to really weigh in on it, but the paper seemed sort of onion-skin-y, and the shapes of the (gorgeous) font bled through to the following and previous pages.

If you haven't read it, you should. It'll take you an hour or two, at most. But savour it. (Especially you, C.)

And now for something completely different (although still from KC): Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. I'm on volume 1 of 3. It's translated from the Norwegian, the library copy that I have was printed in 1969, it takes place in 14th Century Norway, and it's riveting. Never heard of the book or the author before, but I'm glad I have now!

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