Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - Kate DiCamillo [0]
Because of Winn-Dixie
The Magician’s Elephant
The Tale of Despereaux
The Tiger Rising
Mercy Watson to the Rescue
Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride
Mercy Watson Fights Crime
Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise
Mercy Watson Thinks Like a Pig
Mercy Watson:
Something Wonky This Way Comes
Great Joy
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2006 by Kate DiCamillo
Cover and interior illustrations copyright © 2006 by Bagram Ibatoulline
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2009
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
DiCamillo, Kate.
The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane / Kate DiCamillo;
illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Edward Tulane, a cold-hearted and proud toy rabbit, loves only himself until he is separated from the little girl who adores him and travels across the country, acquiring new owners and listening to their hopes, dreams, and histories.
ISBN 978-0-7636-2589-4 (hardcover)
[1. Toys — Fiction. 2. Rabbits — Fiction. 3. Love — Fiction. 4. Listening — Fiction. 5. Adventure and adventurers — Fiction.] I. Ibatoulline, Bagram, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.D5455Mi 2006
[Fic] — dc22 2004056129
ISBN 978-0-7636-3987-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7636-4367-6 (digest paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7636-4942-5 (electronic)
The illustrations for this book were done in acrylic gouache.
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at www.candlewick.com
For Jane Resh Thomas,
who gave me the rabbit and told me his name
The heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
— from “The Testing-Tree,” by Stanley Kunitz
ONCE, IN A HOUSE ON EGYPT STREET, there lived a rabbit who was made almost entirely of china. He had china arms and china legs, china paws and a china head, a china torso and a china nose. His arms and legs were jointed and joined by wire so that his china elbows and china knees could be bent, giving him much freedom of movement.
His ears were made of real rabbit fur, and beneath the fur, there were strong, bendable wires, which allowed the ears to be arranged into poses that reflected the rabbit’s mood — jaunty, tired, full of ennui. His tail, too, was made of real rabbit fur and was fluffy and soft and well shaped.
The rabbit’s name was Edward Tulane, and he was tall. He measured almost three feet from the tip of his ears to the tip of his feet; his eyes were painted a penetrating and intelligent blue.
In all, Edward Tulane felt himself to be an exceptional specimen. Only his whiskers gave him pause. They were long and elegant (as they should be), but they were of uncertain origin. Edward felt quite strongly that they were not the whiskers of a rabbit. Whom the whiskers had belonged to initially — what unsavory animal — was a question that Edward could not bear to consider for too long. And so he did not. He preferred, as a rule, not to think unpleasant thoughts.
Edward’s mistress was a ten-year-old, dark-haired girl named Abilene Tulane, who thought almost as highly of Edward as Edward thought of himself. Each morning after she dressed herself for school, Abilene dressed Edward.
The china rabbit was in possession of an extraordinary wardrobe composed of handmade silk suits, custom shoes fashioned from the finest leather and designed specifically for his rabbit feet, and a wide array of hats equipped with holes so that they could easily fit over Edward’s large and expressive ears. Each pair of well-cut pants had a small pocket for Edward’s gold pocket watch. Abilene wound this watch for him each morning.
“Now,