The Trumpet of the Swan: Full Color Edition Paperback – Special Edition, October 2, 2001

Lovely book, a classic! My 9yo loved it!

The Trumpet of the Swan turned out to be another big hit for my family and I to share together. You know you have a big hit with my kids when they will do whatever you ask of them just so you will sit there and read the next chapter!!TOTS is told from a number of different perspectives. It starts off from the perspective of Sam Beaver, a young boy from Montana on vacation with his father in the Canadian Wilderness. Sam is an introspective young man. He likes to explore and think by himself, he worries about his future, and he keeps a journal where he asks himself questions to ponder every night before he goes to sleep. My 8-year-old Noah was quite taken with that idea and I am getting a journal book of his own to write down his thoughts and make little pictures to keep. Sam is also brave and patient. His patience pays off when one day the Mother Swan and her Cob allow their new cygnets to meet him. And that is how Sam meets Lois, the little swan without a voice. In a very tender moment little Lois, who has no voice, pulls Sam's shoe lace as a way to say hello. The imagination of my young sons were so inspired with what it would take to have a wild bird like Lois come that close to them. We can't even get the stray cats in our neighborhood to stand still long enough for a pat on the head!!The Cob and his wife have come to Canada for the purpose of raising a family. The first couple of chapters are dedicated to the challenges of building a nest and hatching the young cygnets. This is my favorite part of the book! The cob, is a master orator! He never says in anything in 5 words when 50 will do much better! He is arrogant, verbose, flamboyant and charming. He cracked us all up more than once!But the central character in the book is Lois the swan, a trumpeter swan without a voice! As it turns out this is a major birth defect for this young swan if he ever hopes to communicate with his fellow swans, but particularly if he ever hopes to woo and court a female trumpeter swan. Lois sets out on his own to learn how to communicate and with the help of Sam Beaver, he learns to read and write! With his trusty chalkboard and pencil he certainly can communicate with people. But swans cannot read. My children were mortified at the illustration of Lois swimming around with the sign saying "I love you" trying to woo the swan of his dreams, Serena. Love even makes swans surrender some of their dignity I guess.Thanks to bold and brave actions by the cob, Lois does get a voice through a regular musical trumpet! This series of events sets on on a path that leads him to Ontario, Boston, Philadelphia and then eventually through the American South andthen back up to Montana.For geography, tracking Lois's adventures on the map and learning about each of these places can make for interesting lessons. [...]The Trumpet of the Swan is a family story, a love story, and adventure story, and a comedy. I highly recommend it for the entire family!

Loved the character development and plot, I could read it many times over

Shipping was fast, print is perfect. Would order again.

This is the third book by E.B. White that I have read to my daughters (ages 6 & 8), and they have greatly enjoyed all of them (the other two of course were "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little"). It is the story of a young trumpeter swan named Louis who is born with a birth defect in that he can't talk. It seems verbal communication is a great part of a swan's courting ritual, and since Louis can't use his voice to say "Ko-Hoh", his mother and father believe this will be a great disadvantage for him when he gets older and wants to attract a mate. At great personal risk and dishonor, Louis' father, the old cob, sets out to help his son by stealing a brass trumpet from a music store so that his son will have a voice. The old cob is a very funny character. He is always making all of these long winded speeches, and his wife has to cut him off or he would go on forever. The beginning of the book reads likes a nature lesson, and you learn all about swans raising cygnets (baby swans) in their natural inhabitant, but then in the later chapters it turns into an adventure story as Louis sets out on his own. To repay his father for his sacrifice, Louis goes to school to learn to read and write so that he can communicate with humans, and then he sets out to pay off his father's debt and to restore his family name. With the help of a young boy named Sam Beaver who had become friends with this family of swans back in Canada, Louis gets a job as a bugler at a summer camp Sam was working at. Sam knows a lot about nature and wants to work in a zoo when he grows up. At camp KooKooskoos Louis makes many friends, and learns to play revelry and taps on his bugle, and earn a little bit of money as well. At the end of the summer when the camp closes Louis moves to Boston to get a second job working on the swan boats at the Boston Common. (You are greatly reminded at this point of "Make Way for Ducklings" which takes place in the same atmosphere.) The man who owns the swan boats is very nice to Louis and puts him up at the Ritz Hotel for a while. After Sam returns and helps Louis again by surgically separating one of his webbed feet, the quality of Louis' trumpet playing greatly improves. Louis then starts to become well known, and is offered a job as a jazz musician in Philadelphia. He moves out to Philadelphia and stays at the Philadelphia Zoo for a while. It is the custom of the head man at this zoo however to clip a wing of any bird that comes there that they want to keep. This prevents them from flying away. In order for Louis to keep his freedom and not to have his wing clipped he has to agree to play a free concert every Sunday for the people of Philadelphia. By fate it is here in Philadelphia at the zoo, that he meets his true love Serena and woes her with his trumpet playing. After earning enough money to pay off his father's debt, they move back to Montana to start a family. While the book was great there was one minor negative thing I found that prevented it from being quite perfect. In the story Louis goes to great lengths to explain the value of freedom, but then in the end he volunteers to leave one of his cygnets at the Philadelphia zoo whenever they need a new one. Since this would remove that cygnet's freedom, it seemed kind of hypocritical. E.B. White does appears to support zoos in this story, but with the amount of mixed signals he sends it wasn't always whole heartedly. The illustrations in they book by Fred Marcellino were very good and added immensely to the story.

Read this for my daughter’s school, we both throughly enjoyed. The story of the “disabled” swan shines forth lessons on perseverance and determination.

Purchased for a gift, and this arrived in perfect condition and just in time!