The Magic Pencil
Dabs & Company, 2009
241+ pages
Reviewed by P. W. Dowdy
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
The Magic Pencil is a delightful telling of a remarkable friendship between a boy and a girl who take to each other instantly because they somehow are soul connected.
Middle child and sixth grade dreamer Malcolm Bakersfield narrates Karen E. Dabney's young adult novel. From the moment Nia walks into his homeroom class, Malcolm's mind and his heart stand at attention. Full of kindness, thoughtfulness and patience, Nia is a very special person.
Her only flaw seems to be that all of her pencils are more beaten-up than anyone else's in the class. One day Malcolm needs a pencil to take an English test, Nia gives him one of her scruffy looking pencils.
When he learns the next day that he received the second highest score in the class, he changes his mind about Nia's raggedy pencils. He wonders if his high score was due to some magic which came to him from Nia's battered cache. From that point on, Dabney's story is well on its way through suspenseful scenes, which cascade finally into a blast of a satisfying end.
Dabney sculpts The Magic Pencil with skill, employing the dialects of both casual and formal English. While at school and in the presence of certain adults, these African American children speak Proper. In the black community, Proper is when one pronounces final consonants, when one conjugates verbs, and where slang is always taboo.
Still, while among their peers--except for Nia--these same children engage in a more relaxed use of the English language. Slang is preferred, subject-verb agreement matters little, and the enunciation of consonants--final or otherwise--is optional.
Dabney mixes the two dialects with the tenacity of a Joel Chandler Harris and the clarity of purpose of a Mark Twain. As in the works of these two great American folklorists, The Magic Pencil reveals its storytelling beauty through the eyes and the imagination of children daring to discover what life should mean for them.
From its prologue to its epilogue, Dabney offers a refreshing look at a collection of characters who will charm their way into any reader's heart.
This wonderful novel for older children should be on the gift list for every such child in each of our lives.
It ought to be given to happy children and to children with problems, to high IQ children and to children who are slow readers. Dabney's work will make excellent reading as well for adults who grew up with Harris's stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, and Twain's escapades of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
The Magic Pencil makes its appearance at a time when children need most to include in their lives the adventures one can only find by reading books. Parents and teachers can use Karen E. Dabney's novel to motivate young people to look within and to believe in their own strength when facing whatever issues they may meet along life's path.
Destined to be a classic in its own right, two copies of The Magic Pencil will occupy space in my library. The scruffy looking one I will read and lend out over the years. The pristine first edition copy, I will preserve as an investment for my family, for generations to come.
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