Symbolism in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Kate DiCamillo)

I was reading a blog post the other day about The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. I've read and blogged about that book before. I love it. The post I read talked about all the Christian symbolism in the book. I was so surprised! I never thought of that! It reminded me of how fun it was in university to talk about symbolism in stories I was very familiar with. Big aha moments!

That being said, I always wonder, did the author do that on purpose?? Or did some magic happen inside of them when they were reading the book?? A bit of literary big bang?? In all the googling I did I did find someone who said the author has never admitted to the symbolism behind the story. Why?? Maybe it isn't politically correct?? Hasn't that often been the way Christianity has been spread....secretly? Interesting!

When I started googling the idea for The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane I found lots of people writing about it. Here and here and here (this one even hated it!) and here. They weren't hard to find at all! Made me wonder how I missed it! The truth is, when we read it this year, some of the kids must have sensed it. We made a video where they re-told the story. I kept having to do re-takes (and finally gave up) in the section where he is made into a scarecrow because the kid kept saying he was nailed to a cross. Even then I didn't make any other connections.