At first blush, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane seems an odd choice of book to encourage holy imagination in a child. Newberry-winning author Kate DiCamillo’s tale of a china rabbit who becomes separated from his owner (one Abilene Tulane of Egypt Street) and undergoes numerous misadventures has a distinctly downbeat tone. The trouble, if we want to call it that, begins with the titular protagonist.
Edward Tulane is not a nice china rabbit. Vain, prejudiced, self-absorbed — such adjectives only begin to describe him. He’s not your normal “hero,” that’s for sure. And the book’s speculative premise proves odd, too. In most respects, Edward behaves like any other doll, meaning he doesn’t really behave at all. Yet he possesses a rich thought life, one that turns successively darker as the novel progresses. Make no mistake, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane goes places few children’s books dare. Circumstances constantly conspire to sever Edward from those whose care he comes under. In one instance, Edward even has to listen as a child dies from a terrible consumptive disease.
So why would I recommend such a dour title? Because it deals in profound ways with a superlative virtue — love.
Only one member of the Tulane family understands Edward’s selfish nature, namely Abilene’s grandmother Pellegrina. She knows how he would rather contemplate his fine silk suits and startlingly blue eyes than give a minute’s thought to the little girl who loves him. So Pellegrina shares a tragic fairy tale about “a princess who loved no one and cared nothing for love,” a princess who dies because of her egotism. This tale mirrors Edward’s trials, only he doesn’t perish. When he falls from the side of a cruise liner Abilene is on and plunges into the ocean, he learns fear, a new emotion for him. When a jealous daughter throws him into the town dump, he feels the first twinge of loss. When a railway guard kicks him away from a hobo, he discovers the heartbreak born of true affection.
With every separation, Edward learns more of the value and pain of love, love both velveteen and so sharp it can draw blood. The novel almost seems like a narrative incarnation of those famous lines from T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding.”
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
We know of this love, don’t we? A ferocious, irresistible thing, it spoke the universe into being, hung on a tree for its redemption and broke the power of death after three days in the belly of the earth. It draws the dead unto itself and makes them live again. And much like Edward’s ultimate fate, this love won’t stop pursuing its own until it finds them, no matter how long the years may stretch.
(Picture: CC 2009 by allerleirau)
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Great post. Edward Tulane is a terrific book all around–great writing, excellent illustrations, fantastic layout, beautiful thoughts. I agree with you that this book is very Christian. Particularly so because the book’s power is the power of our own story. We are separated from our original owner by sin. We try on identity after identity, but the only happy for us is for our original owner to buy us back so that we can rediscover our original selves. This draws us back to the “Little Gidding” comparison you mentioned:
“With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
You probably didn’t include that part of the poem because you wanted to preserve the ending for those that haven’t read it, where as I like to stumble in like a drunken uncle blaring all the secrets.
Anyway, I think this is a marvelous recommendation and it dovetails nicely with this quote by G.K. Chesterton:
“We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call commonsense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.”
I’m glad you liked it, Zach! I really enjoy DiCamillo’s work, although I would urge a little bit of caution to parents of young children. She’s intense, and while we can draw Christian applications from her books, there seems a note of hostility to Christianity in several titles. Tulane features a sneering fundamentalist who wrongly condemns Edward and his companion Bryce, while The Tale of Despereaux puts the last lines of the Gloria Patri in the mouth of whiskered antagonist. Still, those are more teachable moments than actual problems. DiCamillo’s great and so are her books.
When I said “the only happy for us,” I meant to type “the only happy ending.”
That’s a good caution, and I should clarify that when I said the book is very Christian I didn’t mean to comment on the intentions of the author, merely the ultimate truths that the book supports. It’s sort of interesting that I don’t know any children who have read the book, only adults.
True story: A few years after college I had a job traveling about with a friend who was engaged to be married. Every time he and his then fiance got on the phone, they argued about wedding details and the inconvenient distance between them. They got disconnected one night, and he wanted to call her back, but felt certain that anything they talked about would continue the argument. I had recently bought the Edward Tulane book and had it in the hotel room. He took the book, called her back, and read the first chapter to her. For the next few nights that book became their way to both spend time together and not argue.
They are now married and have a child they read to together.
You know, I remember reading Tulane when my father was stuck on a rehab floor of a hospital for a full month while recovering (at least in part) from a very bad illness. I finished it while looking out at a parking lot stuffed with cars belonging to sick people, and I started to weep. Such a powerful ending coming after all that sadness.
I know one child who read it, and she liked it, which pleases me. I was a little worried that it would freak her out.
You know what needs to happen with your friends, right? They need to read the book to their kiddo!
What age do you recommend this for?
Hi, Lori! This might be something of a copout, but I’d recommend reading the book first yourself before considering it for children. While it has a happy ending, it also contains some very sad content. That said, I think a mature child of five or six could probably handle it. Note the “probably.”
Thanks for the review, Loren. My wife read this to our kids and everyone loved it.
I read this book aloud to my 8th Grade English class. It’s a book for all ages! I so love Kate DiCamillo!
I love this book! Whenever I give it away (which is often), I scrawl a line from Andrew Peterson’s “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone” in the front cover:
“Maybe it’s a better thing
A better thing
To be more than merely innocent
But to be broken, then redeemed by love”
It’s such a hard book for me to recommend, because so many people in my circle don’t understand narrative fiction. And this is one heckuva piece of fiction–raw, oddly paced, and rule breaking. (“Don’t kill kids” is probably the first commandment in children’s stories, and this one breaks it with gusto.) But the story it tells is perfect for conservative Christians who really believe that the Almighty will triumph in the end.
Also, “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone” is AP’s BEST SONG EVAR.