Took a while to grab me, but Kate DiCamillo tells a good old-fashioned story with this one. Once again, her prose is very "storytellerish" and would be good to read aloud. The cover illustration is one of my favorites, but the rest were too dark and wispy for my taste. 
 Favorite quotes: 
 "Leo Matienne had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers." 
 "'And he is up there with nothing and no one to love. It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.'" 
 "The song placed a steady hand on his heart. It comforted him." 
 "'No. Not enough. Never enough. We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?'" 
 "He had been so lonely, so desperately, hopelessly lonely for so long. He might very well spend the rest of his life in prison, alone. And he understood that what he wanted now was something much simpler, much more complicated than the magic he had performed. What he wanted was to turn to somebody and take hold of their hand and look up with them and marvel at the snow falling from the sky. 'This,' he wanted to say to someone he loved and who loved him in return. 'This.'"