Family Book Club: The Magician's Elephant

Last week we finished reading The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. I can't say that it was my favorite DiCamillo book (that would be Because of Winn Dixie). In fact, I really didn't like this one at all. It was so repetitive, redundant, and slow.  Just like that last sentence since there's no need to say both repetitive and redundant in the same sentence - unless you're trying to make a pun. Anyway,  the book said every idea twice in a row (like that horrible show on Qubo, Jacob Two Two). For example, it would say something like "The Elephant sighed. A sigh came from the elephant." After 200 plus pages of that I was ready to scream my head off! The kids however thought it was a great story, and since we do family book club for them, not me, I persevered! Even though I didn't love the book I did think our book club activity turned out great. First we talked a bit about the author and answered questions from the book. Then we played an elephant matching game that had elephant trivia they had to match up.

In the book a fortune teller tells Peter to "follow the elephant" to find his long lost sister. So we played a Do As I'm Doing kind of game and pretended we were elephants.Tyson said I had to include this picture because I look like such a dork.  I'm pretty sure we were in the middle of doing jumping jacks down low on this one.  Elephants do jumping jacks, right?!!

In this one we were swinging our hips back and forth like an elephant walking. The kids thought this one was pretty funny.

Then we had snacks, Circus elephant cookies and Crush soda. In the book a woman gets crushed by the elephant. Sorry, I gave away the main plot and now you don't have to read it! My bad! (you can thank me later!)

Now we're moving on to our next book. A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. I can already tell it's a much better book than The Magician's Elephant! I've got some great ideas for the next book club activity, privy tipping anyone?!!!