The Copper Elephant, by Adam Rapp, is a futuristic, apocalyptical chapter book that pits an eleven-year-old girl against the combined forces of relentless troopers, vicious dogs, and greedy human adults. Her world is one of constant grayness and driving rain, of starvation and secrecy, and of unrelenting fear. There is little kindness in this society, and even less hope. Still, the girl, Whensday, struggles to find some meaning for her existence and comes to care for other outcasts and escapees she meets. She makes a valiant attempt to overcome the "system," which kills most children before they are twelve and takes the basic of living essentials away from the majority of the remaining adult people. If she can only survive — on the run — for a couple of months until she is twelve, then perhaps she will survive as an adult.

The question in my mind as I read of Whensday's struggle was, "Why would she want to survive?" Rapp offers no clear hope that life for Whensday would be better as an adult than as a child. True, she manages to evade her pursuers and to make some friends, but she has also witnessed the deaths of her friends. She "saves" one person, and it isn't herself. Although she has a different fate than the one she envisions, it is not one that "frees" her. Even so, it is only through the timely (and unlikely) help of another adult — using Whensday for her own purposes — that Rapp provides salvation. There is no explanation of how the society became this brutal — although I think the reader is to assume that there was a nuclear war. The whole plot is shallow in its development, and the children digging in stone pits for no apparent reason, except to die, reflects the irrationality of the society and the plot.

The American Library Association praised Rapp's use of language as "masterful" (back cover). I found it crude. His attempts at streams of consciousness were at best dull, at times agonizing. The title comes from someone's "vision" while looking into Whensday's mouth. While Whensday appears to have obtained a rudimentary education before being abducted from her "school," other children do not seem to have gotten that and their pronunciations and word usage mimic the worst of nonsense talk. I think it was supposed to provide humor, but with such dire straits being described, it falls short. There are acts of violence that probably should not be presented to the target audience, which is hard to determine. Since Whensday is a pre-teen, one would assume the intended audience is, too; but, sexual maturity comes to these children early, so perhaps young adolescents are the target audience. Even so — the actions described are not appropriate for either of these ages. I would not recommend this book for anyone under sixteen — indeed, I would not recommend this book at all.

"It's the pits."
Prof. Opal