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In this mysterious book by one of my favorite authors, Kate Dicamillo, an eleven year old boy named Peter Augustus Duchene learns from a fortune teller that he must follow “the elephant” to find his long lost sister. He is confused; there are no elephants in his town and there haven’t been for years, until a magician conjures up an elephant. Little does he know, but him and his friends Leo Matienne, Madam LaVaughn, Bartok Whynn, Sister Marie, Hans Ickman, Tomas, and Iddo are about to go on a long journey to save his sister and the elephant.

I’m not sure, but I believe that this book would fall under the category of fiction (or if there is such a thing, mysterious fiction) and that it is set in a old fashioned city called Baltese. It is an interesting book; I like how the author changes perspective in each chapter and how you can even go inside the elephants head and look at the story from her point of view, and I also really like how the author describes Peter’s meals: exceptionally small fish and three day old bread. Something I dislike, though, is that the story gets a little dry at points. The age range, I think, would be from about 8 to 13. No lower than eight because younger children might understand it, but no higher than 13 because older children might not be into books like this. I also think the age range should start at 8 instead of 9 because of the length of the book; it isn’t very long.

I thought this was a very haunting but amusing read, and I would recommend it to anyone who is a big fan of Kate’s other books