“The Indian in the Cupboard” was one of my favorite books
when I was in school. I think that it
was on our fourth-grade reading list, and I remember that our teacher read it
to us out loud, one chapter every day. I
was so impatient back then that I checked it out from the library and finished
it myself at home, because I couldn’t wait to see how the story turned
out! Even reading it now, the book is
just as good as I remember.
This book is about Omri, who gets an empty cupboard for his
birthday present. Completely by
accident, Omri places a plastic Indian inside the cupboard and locks it with a
family heirloom key. The Indian comes to
life, and Omri quickly discovers that he can bring other plastic toys to life
as well. Working with his friend
Patrick, Omri quickly turns his messy bedroom into the Wild West, complete with
a cowboy and horses.
This sounds like an awesome way to play, but the situation
quickly gets out of hand. Omri discovers that his toys are real people, with
real problems. The cowboy is an
uncontrollable crybaby, and the Indian wants to build a home and take a
wife. Even worse, Omri and Patrick begin
to fight over who owns which toys. It’s
a tense situation, and it’s especially difficult for them to keep this magic a
secret between them.
I’d recommend this book to just about anyone, even if you
don’t really like books about magic. The
magic in this story is just sort of there in the background, and the real plot
is about what happens to the characters.
You can’t help being amazed as these tiny people learn to adapt to this
huge new world around them, and how Omri learns to be responsible for the
people he brought to life.
After I read this book again, I spent some time looking at all
of the bulldozers and excavators that my son keeps in his room. If they somehow turned real, I bet that
they’d turn our house into a construction site!
Do you have any favorite toys of your own? Do you ever wonder what would happen if they
somehow became real?
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