“What world is this I now inhabit, and how shall I live in it?” HOW DOES KATE DICAMILLO DO THIS? “What does, then, change the world? . . . Love, and also stories. ” -- “every illumination that Brother Edik painted in the Chronicles of Sorrowing—every rising sun or light-dappled tree or shining letter—was in celebration of the beauty of the world and also in defiance of the darkness that had so terrified him as a boy, and terrified him still.” -- “She had understood then that the world—and the space beyond it—was filled with marvel upon marvel, too many marvels to ever count.” -- “The world,” said Beatryce to Jack Dory, “can be spelled.” -- “He was glad to have been a part of the story. Was that enough? That would have to be enough.” -- “His heart was heavy, too. It was, he reckoned, a heart full of too many things. It carried the letters of the alphabet, waiting to be fashioned into words. It carried Granny Bibspeak, and his parents, and Beatryce. How much could a heart hold?” -- “We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home.” -- “To be brave is to not turn away. To be brave is to go forward. To be brave is to love.” -- “We do not know what will become. What will become is what becomes, and that is all we know.”

I always appreciate how magical DiCamillo’s books are, and how they don’t shy away from some darker tones. This one is darker than I expected though, and the darkest I’ve read from her so far.

As with most of DiCamillo's work, I have to ask: who is the audience for this book? Librarians who are on award committees, not kids.