Deep ponderings in a soup pot

The whimsical and the wise in The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic

On a dark night in a dense forest while the great wide wonder of the stormy sky threatened to burst through the trees and swallow her up, a girl lost her hat.¹

With one sentence, Jennifer Trafton pulls her readers into The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic. At my weekly library sessions with a local group of elementary students, I’m reading this book aloud, and they’ve been enthralled from chapter one.

For most of them, it’s their first time reading it. But on whatever reread this is for me, I’m soaking in, all over again, the genius of Trafton’s work.

It’s clearly written for kids, and she leans into that. Restless mangroves run away with houses. Poisonous tortoises lurk in the woods. A character has the name “Guafnoggle,” which is delightful in and of itself (and a lot of fun to read aloud).

But with each progressive step through her world, Jennifer Trafton reveals another layer to that world. She’s unabashedly having fun, but she’s also—

No, let me rephrase that.

She’s unabashedly having fun, and she’s also saying things—important things—about the people who inhabit our own, equally-strange world.