The Copper Elephant - Hardcover

Rapp, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886910421 ISBN 13: 9781886910423

Publisher: Front Street imprint of Boyds Mills Press, 1999

Synopsis

The Copper Elephant is the riveting story of 11-year-old Whensday, who lives in the Shelf, a toxic wasteland of nonstop poisonous rain ruled by the ruthless Aston Loe and his Syndicate men. Rescued from slave labor to be sold to a childless matron from Top Town, Whensday flees into the Bone Trees, where she meets other renegade "undertwelves"--Oakley Brownhouse and Honeycut. This unlikely trio bands together and learns about love, strength, loss, and survival.

About this title

About the Author

Adam Rapp is a playwright and author of two previous young adult novels, The Buffalo Tree and Missing the Piano, the latter named Best Book for Young Adults as well as a Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers by the American Library Association. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

As ominous and as skillful in its creation of dialect as his The Buffalo Tree, Rapp's dystopian adventure may be too hermetic to welcome a wide readership. The earth is rapidly decaying and is being assaulted by poison rains; brutal soldiers control what is left of the population by murdering the weak, sterilizing women and enslaving all orphans under the age of 12. Through luck and another character's perception that she is "special," Whensday, one of the luckier Undertwelves, manages to escape the fate of the Digit Kids who are worked to death in the Pits. She meets up with two fellow fugitives: Honeycut, a slow-witted 19-year-old who is sculpting a life-size elephant out of bits of foil, and Oakley, a younger orphan who awakens Whensday's maternal instincts as well as her sexuality. Glimmers of hope are few and far between and almost always undercut by frustratingly grim ironies. For example, Honeycut gets stoned to death after trying to save Whensday from a rapist. The bleak landscape is made even more difficult to comprehend by Whensday's impoverished language ("The Babymakers got a life hole where the Lost Men go lay"). Otherwise very well crafted, this story lacks a strong resolution; having exerted themselves to reach the finish line, readers may feel frustrated by the tentative ending. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Envisioning a nightmarish future in which children deemed small or otherwise defective are worked to death breaking rocks, and the constant rain is so acid it raises blisters, Rapp (Buffalo Tree, 1997) crafts another lurid shocker. Learning that the coffin maker who has housed her is about to sell her off, 11-year-old Whensday, also known as ``33'' for the tattoo on her arm, sneaks away. Cataloging the disease, excrement, blood, vomit, mutations, slime, and general filth with matter-of-fact bluntness, she takes temporary shelter from the rain with Honeycut, a huge, dimwitted teenager; tries to escape with another fugitive who dies of ebola-like Blackfrost; is raped by an officer of the brutal local militia; and sees Honeycut stoned to death for killing the man. Whensday tells her tale in a colorful idiolect, mixing dreams and scatological exchanges with Oakley, a tough-talking younger friend. Certain she's about to die since she can't stop vomiting, Whensday is rescued by a hidden community of women who clean her up and tell her she's pregnanta happy ending, under the circumstances. Often gripping, sometimes blackly funny in a squalid way, this will remind readers of Russell Hoban's Ridley Walker (1980) and other tales of post-apocalyptic devastation. (Fiction. 13-15) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Grade 9 Up-Whensday, 11, lives near the Pits and not far from the Shelf, among the Bone Trees with Tick Burrowman, who makes body boxes for the children dying daily as a result of their underground forced labor. This polluted dystopia is undeniably brutal, dark, and grim. The acid rain is so strong it burns ungreased skin. Children are bought or bartered for by the wealthy and powerful. Whensday strikes out on her own, is raped, and sees her friend Joe Painter die when their attempt to escape across the river fails. She rails against God and finds no one to hear her prayers. The matter-of-fact first-person narrative is intense, devoid of quotation marks, and larded with descriptive slang such as "dooks" (excrement), "dinker" (penis), and "bloody jellyfishes" (her menstrual flow) that will challenge readers. It credibly communicates the innocence/ignorance and self-centeredness of Whensday and her community of outcasts. Amid the debris, the children develop friendships, experience love, share first kisses, and find occasional humor. While the subject matter is wretched, Rapp's "future speak" becomes almost melodic while describing events, feelings, and actions that are raw, searing, violent, and frightening. Less successful is the author's development of this future world. Other than establishing that it is cruel, ugly, and difficult, there is little sense of place for readers to get a hold of and many will give up in frustration. Yet for those readers who can bear to finish this novel, there is a positive message: despite all odds, survival, even in these worst of circumstances, is possible.
Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Jr. High School, Iowa City, IA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Front Street imprint of Boyds Mills Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1886910421
• ISBN 13: 9781886910423
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256