Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Book of Lost Things

Annotation: During WWII in England, young David loses his mother and finds solace in the fairytales she left behind, until strange things begin to happen and David finds himself trapped in a dangerous fairytale world, fighting for his life and the chance to return home.

Book Talk:
David has always loved stories, especially the fairy tale books his mother had shared with him before she died. But after her death, strange things begin to happen to David. His mother’s old books start speaking and David begins to have “episodes,” blacking out and coming to with faint memories of another world that seems to beckon to him. It doesn’t help that David’s father takes up with a new woman who soon bears another son, and David finds himself living in her strange old country home. His father insists it’s the safest option while Germany is regularly bombing London. At first David doesn’t necessarily mind his new room and enjoys all the old books left behind on the shelves, even if they do insist on speaking and even if the versions of fairytales they contain are fractured and odd, to say the least. But soon he learns about the mystery of the last boy who occupied the room. And he begins to notice the persistent way the ivy all seems to grow directly to his window and poke through the walls into his room.

“The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, as David’s mother had once told him, but sometimes the wall separating the two became so thin and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other.


That was when the trouble started.
That was when the bad things came.
That was when the Crooked Man began to appear to David.”

And it’s not just the Crooked Man, though his appearance seems sinister enough. David begins to hear his mother’s voice calling for his help from a world beyond his own and one night he just can’t bear it any more. It takes all his courage to cross over, but once in the other world, David finds himself in mortal danger, facing horrible creatures and encountering twisted versions of familiar characters and plots from beloved fairy tales. And his mother is nowhere to be found.

Can David survive in the other world to learn what his purpose is for travelling to it? And if he does survive, will he ever be able cross back over and return home to his own world?


Check out this book trailer teaser of David's epic adventure!
"The Book of Lost Things Trailer" Online Posting. YouTube, 11 January 2011. Web. 29 November 2011. 

Awards:
  • 2007 Alex Award
  • Nominee 2007 Irish Book Award

    Connolly, John. The Book of Lost Things. New York: Atria-Simon, 2006. Print.

    Image courtesy of http://www.boomtron.com/

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