befus's Full Review: Kate DiCamillo - The Miraculous Journey of Edward ...
Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a rabbit who was made almost entirely of china.
So begins Kate DiCamillo's beautiful fairy-tale The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. What she could have written in the second line, though it's probably just as well that she didn't, was this: "And we all know that china is breakable."
It is a rare pleasure indeed to read a book as gentle, touching and fine as this story about a toy china rabbit and his unexpected journeys. DiCamillo deftly mixes together a contemporary sensibility with elements of old-fashioned fairy-tales, those kinds that were not afraid to tackle darkness and sadness. At various times I was reminded of Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit, and the stories of Hans Christian Anderson. A sepia toned wash seems to cover the story itself as well as the stunning illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline.
Edward Tulane is an unlikely hero for us to care about, but care we do. He's a beautiful, handmade china rabbit with bendable arms and legs and a whole closet full of gorgeous silken clothes, hats and real leather shoes. A little girl named Abilene Tulane was given Edward on her 7th birthday, and treats him almost as thought he's another child like herself. Edward gets to sit in the window and wait for her to come home from school, his precious gold pocket watch on his knee. He even gets to sit at the family dinner table (though all he can see from his low vantage point is the white tablecloth) and Abilene sometimes asks her Mama and Papa to repeat something they've just said in case Edward didn't hear it the first time.
In truth, Edward doesn't hear much. Not that he can't -- although in true fairy-tale and nursery story tradition he cannot speak to humans, only to other toys -- there's nothing wrong with his long real rabbit fur ears. Edward doesn't hear much because he chooses not to listen. His life is a cossetted life of privilege in which he takes much for granted, including Abilene's lavish love. A bit bored by life, he tunes out most of the words of the humans all around him except for an occasional comment or story from Pellegrina, Abilene's grandmother who originally had him made and gave him to Abilene.
If you think this sounds like a pretty little story (ho-hum) just wait! A few chapters in, the story and indeed Edward's whole privileged toy-rabbit life, changes forever. The family takes a long ocean voyage where, much to our hero's dismay, he is snatched out of Abilene's embrace by two rough and tumble boys. In the ensuing struggle to get him back, he goes sailing overboard. Thus Edward plunges to the heart of the dark sea and takes the narrative with him.
Kate DiCamillo is truly a story-telling artist. She's not afraid to plunge a beautiful and enchanting tale into the deep waters of worries, fears and loss -- heavy emotions, you may think, for a story written for children, but all things that children have experienced and will understand. My only caution here is that very young children, say 6 and under, will find some of Edward's subsequent story very sad indeed, perhaps a bit frightening. The odd and somewhat horrifying bedtime story that Pellegrina tells to Abilene in the early chapters, a story that comes back to haunt Edward and in many way prefigures his upcoming journey, would also likely frighten very young children. I don't plan to read this to my almost four year old anytime in the next couple of years, but I do hope to read it to her when she's a little older. I would mostly likely categorize this tale as appropriate for children 7 or 8 and up, with the caveat that you know your children best. A parental review reading of this book is probably in order, which I think will frankly be a pleasure for most parents.
But back to our story. I didn't mean to leave poor Edward on the bottom of the ocean floor. DiCamillo doesn't leave him there either, at least not for long. After several months, our bedraggled bunny friend is caught up in a net and taken home by a salty fisherman named Lawrence. He and his wife Nellie take him in, clean him, dress him and love him (there is the slight problem that Nellie puts him in a dress and calls him Susanna, but Edward is so happy to be rescued he decides he can live even with this mortification). However, just when he's growing truly fond of Nellie and Lawrence in a way he never thought he could grow fond of human beings, something happens to upset his tranquil living arrangement. I won't go into any details, but suffice it to say, it's sad. Edward soon finds himself in a garbage heap outside town.
And so it goes. For several chapters, our hero finds himself travelling through life, learning more and more about loving and being loved, but always finding his happiness snatched away. He becomes lost many times. His clothes and names change. He tramps with a hobo named Bull and his dog Lucy. He's made into a scarecrow in a garden. He's adopted by a boy named Bryce who gives him away to his ill (and dying) little sister, Sarah Ruth.
All the way through these adventures and misadventures, something is happening to Edward. In some sense he is (to use fairy-tale language) becoming real. In this case, he's not turning into a real live rabbit, but he's learning how to give and receive love. Most of all, he is learning to listen to others and to the stories of their own hard lives and hard-knock journeys. If that sounds moralistic, so be it. Good lessons abound in this book. But they're not given in a boring, didactic fashion. Through DiCamillo's artistry, young readers (and indeed this not so young reader) will come to really care about Edward and to willingly follow him on his travels. The lessons are the best kind -- learned through the beauty and drama of the story itself.
Edward's penultimate journey is one of the hardest to bear. Not only his heart breaks, but his fine china head. He's put back together by a very skilled doll-maker, whose profound first words to Edward brought tears to my eyes as I considered the worth of this precious rabbit and by implication, the worth of each broken human being in our world who is in need of mending:
"Exceedingly well made,"said the man who was running a warm cloth over Edward's face, "a work of art, I would say -- a surpassingly, unbelievably dirty work of art, but art nonetheless. And dirt can be dealt with. Just as your broken head has been dealt with."
I won't give away the end except to say this: it is a classically, full-circle, beautiful and wonderful version of "happy ever after" and one of the most satisfying story conclusions I'd read in a long time. I confess that a page or so before the very end, I suspected I knew what was coming, but I wanted it come because such an ending had a sense of "yes, of course, it must happen that way -- it couldn't happen any other way at all!" And yes, I cried.
Author Kate DiCamillo has another wonderful winner in this book. Her prose is gorgeous, utilizing fairy-tale cadence and exulting in the richness of language. No "writing down" to children here! I was a huge fan of her Newbery Honor book Because of Winn-Dixie and liked her Newbery Award winning Tale of Desperaux. I liked The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane even more than Desperaux, however, and hope it too will win heaps of deserving awards.
The book is approximately 200 pages long with 27 chapters (most a very good length for a one-chapter-per-night read aloud). It reads faster than you think it will, in part because of a large font and generous margins. The book itself is beautifully designed on a creamy colored paper with sepia toned drawings to start each chapter and several full-color illustrations on glossy-stock scattered throughout. These inset illustrations are beautifully rendered in acrylic gouache by artist Bagram Ibatoulline; they'll remind you of old-fashioned oil paintings. A number of them reminded me a bit of Norman Rockwell, though with a more 19th century feel to the people and clothing.
I loved Edward Tulane and plan to journey with him many more times. If I could give six stars to this exceedingly well made book, I would.
It all starts simply: A china rabbit, a house, and a girl. And then one day, the rabbit, who is named Edward Tulane, disappears and begins a miraculou...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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