The Trumpet of the Swan

Summary

On a camping trip in the Canadian woods, eleven-year-old Sam Beaver, a Montana rancher's son who loves wild things and keeps a journal that ends each night with a question, discovers a pair of trumpeter swans nesting on a hidden pond. He keeps their secret, and when a fox creeps up on the sitting pen he drives it off with a stick. Five cygnets hatch, and Sam watches them; but one, named Louis, cannot make any sound at all. His father, the cob, a grand and long-winded bird given to elaborate speeches, and his sensible mother, the pen, take the family south for the winter to the Red Rock Lakes in Montana, where Louis grows strong but remains voiceless and cannot say the swans' ko-hoh. A trumpeter that cannot trumpet cannot court a mate, and Louis falls in love with a beautiful young swan, Serena, who ignores him. Louis decides to learn to read and write. He finds Sam, goes to school with him in Mrs. Hammerbotham's class, learns to write words on a slate, and wears the slate and a chalk pencil around his neck. But Serena cannot read. The cob then flies to Billings, crashes through the window of a music store, and seizes a brass trumpet for his son, and the storekeeper's shot wounds him in the shoulder. Louis now owns a voice, and a debt of honor. He teaches himself to play; with Sam's help he takes a summer job as camp bugler at Camp Kookooskoos in Ontario, has a web of one foot slit so he can work the trumpet's three valves, and wins a medal for saving a boy, Applegate Skinner, from drowning. Next he plays for the Swan Boats in the Boston Public Garden, spending a night at the Ritz hotel, and then takes a well-paid engagement at a Philadelphia nightclub, where he lives on the lake at the zoo. A storm drives Serena onto the zoo lake, and Louis's trumpet at last wins her. When the zoo wants to keep them, Sam travels east and arranges their freedom in exchange for any cygnets the zoo may need in the future. Louis gives his earnings to his father, who flies back to Billings and repays the storekeeper. In the last chapter, years later, Louis and Serena return to the pond where he was hatched, and Sam, now older, hears Louis's trumpet across the water at evening. Harper & Row published the book in 1970 with drawings by Edward Frascino; it was a finalist for the 1971 National Book Award for children's books.

Top Lessons

• Turning a weakness into a gift

  Louis cannot make the one sound every trumpeter swan makes. Instead of giving up, he learns to write and then to play music, and the trumpet becomes something more beautiful than an ordinary swan's voice. White shows that hard work can turn a lack into a calling.

• Paying what you owe

  The cob takes the trumpet for love of his son, but it is still a theft, and both father and son know it. Louis works at camp, in Boston and in Philadelphia until he has enough to repay the storekeeper and the broken window.

• A friend who keeps secrets and keeps faith

  Sam keeps the swans' nest secret, drives off the fox, takes Louis to school, and travels east to speak for him at the zoo. White draws a friendship in which a boy respects wild creatures and helps them stay free.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Louis's congenital muteness is the book's central problem, and the story is often read as a gentle parable about disability and accommodation: he learns written language, carries a slate for communication, and finally adopts an instrument as a substitute voice, a sequence that loosely parallels augmentative communication for children who cannot speak. To play the trumpet's valves, Louis has the web of one foot slit, a small procedure told without medical detail. The cob's gunshot wound in the shoulder at the Billings music store, from which he recovers, is the other injury in the book. These are thematic connections in a children's fable, not clinical portraits.

• Chapter 5: Louis

  The parents discover that Louis has no voice, and the cob and pen discuss what this will mean for him.

• Chapter 7: School Days

  Louis learns to read and write in Mrs. Hammerbotham's class and begins to communicate with a slate.

• Chapter 9: The Trumpet

  The cob crashes through the music store window in Billings and is wounded by the storekeeper's shot.

• Chapter 11: Camp Kookooskoos

  The web of Louis's foot is slit so that he can press the trumpet's valves.