by Kate DiCamillo
ages: 9+
First sentence: “At the end of the century before last, in the market square of the city of Baltese, there stood a boy with a hat on his head and a coin in his hand.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy picked up at KidlitCon 2009 (Yes, it really has taken me this long to get around to reading it.)

Peter is an orphan, being taken care of by an old military friend of his father’s. He barely remembers his parents, and his guardian has told him for years that Peter’s baby sister was stillborn. Peter feels no hope of ever seeing any of them again, resigned to his meager lifestyle with a cranky old man. That is, until he spends a coin on a fortune teller who gives him hope. Hope that his sister is alive, hope that he can find her. Sure, it’s impossible, but since when is the impossible — especially when you have a magician and an elephant and a policeman helping — improbable?

It’s a very charming and sweet story. One that has the power to resonate with you afterward: it’s about hope and love and change, but nothing Grand or Sweeping. It’s all very small, very personal. It explores, very subtly, the effects that one person can have on another, and the desires we have to be Grand and Sweeping sometimes. It worked as a parable, the writing was gorgeous. I think it’d work wonderfully as a read aloud. Which brings me to my only quibble: would a kid read this? My friend Tricia assures me her daughter loved it, but I’m not sure.

Even with that, I think it’s a marvelous little story.