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Original Essays | December 12, 2009

The Courage of Others

0 comments By Alexander McCall Smith

I have recently written a novel about life in England during the Second World War. I felt some concern before I tackled this theme — the War... Continue »

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1. 
   $16.76 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   La's Orchestra Saves the World

   Alexander McCall Smith

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Bonnie Palmer, December 13, 2007

Do you remember That One Book from your youth? You know the one I mean: the one that did more than just narrate an adventure story about virtuous characters vanquishing dastardly villains; the one that actually taught you that reading could be a miraculous adventure in and of itself; the one that almost single-handedly made you into the ardent reader you are today. In his debut novel, Matthew Skelton presents a children’s book with the faintly familiar storyline of a quest by a modern boy for an ancient object that will yield a significant historical secret--a powerful object which must of course be kept from those who would use its secret for evil purposes. But Endymion Spring’s real charm is as an homage to That One Book that made a reader of you, and to the delightful world of books that followed. This novel deftly weaves together the history of printing, the value of libraries as repositories of the written word, and the obsessive acquisitiveness that drives the book collector in his hunt for elusive quarry. It is also a fine kids’ book that tackles a child’s fears of family disintegration, sibling rivalry with a favored child, and the indescribable joy of finding That One Book that awakens one’s interest in the pleasures and the possibilities of the literary. Buy it for a young person who is teetering at the edge of the literary cosmos, or for yourself to relive falling into that marvelous universe.

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