Anticipating Kate DiCamillo's Next Book

(DISCLAIMER: I am in a very silly mood. So silly, I cannot be held liable for any logical fallacies or literary mayhem herein.)

               rising..............an

       tiger                            elephant

A                                                      crashing 

                                                                        down!

                                                                          WHAT NEXT?   

I just read, The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo. I am currently reading The Magician's Elephant, also by Ms. DiCamillo, in which an elephant comes crashing down through the roof of an opera house. Tigers rising and elephants crashing down, oh my! 

What can we expect in Kate DiCamillo's next book? Perhaps something lateral? Here are my less than lucid speculations:

Sideways Monkey:  Jack gets cold feet during his bachelor party and suffers a concussion due to an unseemly incident involving a motorcycle helmet.  When he wakes, Jack discovers he is all alone in the world except for Miles, an enigmatic, Merlot hating, pot bellied monkey. Together they learn valuable lessons in friendship and how to stage a fake automobile accident.

The Night of the Reclining Giraffe: Ten year old Izhtak Schwartz hates Passover, having nearly gagged to death on Matzoh when he was seven. Like an Easter Bunny running for his life, Izhtak flees and through pluck, along with assistance from a clever plot device, makes his way to Africa where he meets a sarcastic, pagan-worshiping giraffe. Izhtak takes a liking to the long neck's  embittered view of the world and nicknames him, Groucho. After many life-threatening, yet hilarious adventures, the boy has an epiphany about  Passover. In the story's stirring climax, he teaches Groucho the Seder and the importance of reclining while they eat. Together they recline, eat Matzoh and imbibe of Manischewitz wine as wild hyenas and meerkats  serenade with a Hip Hop version of Hava Nagila. 

The Raven's Lateral: Billy, like his older brother, Biff, wants to quarterback the Ravens football team in the Chincoteague youth football league. Alas, Coach Parker Derm, the crippled yet vibrant gridiron mastermind, has installed a new trick play requiring the deft and precise execution of the lateral pass. Alas and alack, for Billy, no matter how hard he tries, is unable to master the deceptive pass! Then, one night, a friggin' raven taps on his bedroom window and teaches the aspiring quarterback to look beyond the hash marks.

Anticipating Kate DiCamillo's Next Book

One Word for Ten...or a Hundred?

I found the following observation (confession?) from Kate DiCamillo at The Pippin Insider: "Telling stories is hard work; the stories that I like, the ones that seem most powerful to me, have an ineffable quality of one word seeming to do the work of ten words."

One word for ten? Sounds daunting, eh? How about one word for a hundred? Let flash back to an earlier post of mine where I asked whether it was possible for one hundred words to the job of ten thousand. (i.e., a ratio of one word for one hundred).  Here’s what I wrote:

Is it possible for one hundred words to the job of ten thousand?

I've been contemplating this question since reading a wonderful short story, Bog Rhubard Shoots, by Yamashiro Tomoe (it's from the book, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows). It tells the tale of Mitsuko, a young Japanese woman, who, in the 1940s, was sent to prison for her involvement in the left-wing political movement (as was her husband, who was assigned to different prison).

Under the terms of her conviction, Mitsuko "could write only one letter of postcard length each month. Even though the frequency and length of the letters were limited, they still had to be checked over by four persons: the guard, the chief guard, the chaplain, and the supervisor of the guards. Under these circumstances, one hundred words had to do the job of ten thousand in the letters that Mitsuko and her husband exchanged. If a letter written under restricted conditions failed to pass the censors and was stamped 'To be handed over upon release,' the letter itself would probably shed tears."

Sigh!

One Word for Ten...or a Hundred?