Thursday, June 11, 2009

my review of Magician’s Elephant, by Kate DiCamillo

I posted this on my book club's blog, I have had some problems getting through the censors before because I was too harsh. I will wait and see if this gets through, I really hope it does get through because I'm really proud of this post. I will keep you guys informed.

Kate DiCamillo has won two Newbery awards and many others, so one comes to this book expecting, at the very least, a decent book. I will get this out of the way right now, I am not a fan. I don’t hate her or anything, I just haven’t really loved any of her books in the past.

So I came to this book expecting a decent book. I did not get what I expected. I did not enjoy this book. I am sorry all you Kate fans but this is not, in my humble opinion, a good book.

The author tries to recreate the success she had with the “Tale of Desperaux”, in which she brings together various plot points at the end for a satisfying conclusion. In that book she dedicates 100 pages per point to three points.

In this book she dedicates one page per character, which makes the book hard to follow. In fact, I found the whole book very confusing. I felt that this book felt kind of thrown together, as if the author had to write a book, but either didn’t have enough time to write, or didn’t care enough to put a ton of effort in.

I also felt that the characters were undeveloped, and the main character had the most aggravating personalities that I have ever read, I really didn’t like him. The end was just, once again in my opinion, sloppy.

This author has done decent work in the past, and I know that my sister and brother love all of her books that they have read, but this could has used quite a lot more work, in my opinion. Even though I really did not enjoy this book I think it will win the Newbery award. The committee loves Kate and will jump at the chance to reward her once again, but I would not vote for it.

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