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Original Essays | October 17, 2009

Jessica Maxwell: IMG God's Tea Party



My Catholic friend tilted her teacup like a fortune-teller. "You know," she said, "I think people who don't have God in their lives are like people... Continue »
  1. $17.50 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

Skellig

by David Almond

Skellig Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Ten-year-old Michael was looking forward to moving into a new house. But now his baby sister is ill, his parents are frantic, and Doctor Death has come to call. Michael feels helpless. Then he steps into the crumbling garage....What is this thing beneath the spiders' webs and dead flies? A human being, or a strange kind of beast never before seen? The only person Michael can confide in is his new friend, Mina. Together, they carry the creature out into the light, and Michael's world changes forever.

Review:

"Almond makes a triumphant debut in the field of children's literature with prose that is at once eerie, magical, and poignant." Publishers Weekly, Starred

Review:

"A powerful, atmospheric story...the marvelous and everyday mix in haunting, memorable ways." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"A lovingly done, thought-provoking novel." School Library Journal, Starred

Review:

"Its strength as a novel is in its subtlety....Skellig is a fine book." The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Some of the writing takes one's breath away." Booklist, Starred

Review:

"Skellig is a strange book, certainly a memorable one. It isn't the usual fantasy, rather there is something about it that makes the reader feel if he or she just looked a bit harder and listened more carefully, many wondrous creatures would be there to find." KLIATT

Synopsis:

David Almond’s Printz Honor–winning novel celebrates its 10th anniversary!

Ten-year-old Michael was looking forward to moving into a new house. But now his baby sister is ill, his parents are frantic, and Doctor Death has come to call. Michael feels helpless. Then he steps into the crumbling garage. . . . What is this thing beneath the spiders' webs and dead flies? A human being, or a strange kind of beast never before seen? The only person Michael can confide in is his new friend, Mina. Together, they carry the creature out into the light, and Michael's world changes forever. . . .

About the Author

“I grew up in a big extended Catholic family [in the north of England]. I listened to the stories and songs at family parties. I listened to the gossip that filled Dragone’s coffee shop. I ran with my friends through the open spaces and the narrow lanes. We scared each other with ghost stories told in fragile tents on dark nights. We promised never-ending friendship and whispered of the amazing journeys we’d take together.

“I sat with my grandfather in his allotment, held tiny Easter chicks in my hands while he smoked his pipe and the factory sirens wailed and larks yelled high above. I trembled at the images presented to us in church, at the awful threats and glorious promises made by black-clad priests with Irish voices. I scribbled stories and stitched them into little books. I disliked school and loved the library, a little square building in which I dreamed that books with my name on them would stand one day on the shelves.

Skellig, my first children’s novel, came out of the blue, as if it had been waiting a long time to be told. It seemed to write itself. It took six months, was rapidly taken by Hodder Children’s Books and has changed my life. By the time Skellig came out, I’d written my next children’s novel, Kit’s Wilderness. These books are suffused with the landscape and spirit of my own childhood. By looking back into the past, by re-imagining it and blending it with what I see around me now, I found a way to move forward and to become something that I am intensely happy to be: a writer for children.”

David Almond is the winner of the 2001 Michael L. Printz Award for Kit’s Wilderness, which has also been named best book of the year by School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. He has been called "the foremost practitioner in children's literature of magical realism." (Booklist) His first book for young readers, Skellig, is a Printz Honor winner. David Almond lives with his family in Newcastle, England.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
Janet Hamilton, December 26, 2006 (view all comments by Janet Hamilton)
In Skellig, David Almond has created a creature both believable and unbelievable. Young Michael finds Skellig in a falling down garage, covered with dust, spider webs and dead flies. ?He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead,? is how Michael describes his first impression. Giving Skellig friendship and sustenance, with the help of his new friend Mina, Michael brings him back to life and in the process, with the help of a heart surgeon, keeps his baby sister alive. Is Skellig real? Is he a beer drinking, Chinese-food loving angel? Do we all have wings folded under our shoulder blades? What must we do to discover their presence and purpose. Could we all fly out from the dark places where we are hidden in our dried out dust-bin lives if we learned to listen and look and feel and be present to experience the heart beat of others right there next to our own?

Gently full of magic and realism, and the beauty and harshness of nature, Almond?s young adult novel is masculine and feminine, thoughtful and intense, full of contradictions, and tenderly oozing with life and of death. He captures the challenge of the human heart to embrace its own helplessness and work a magic transformation. In writing about a young boy just discovering his inner power, Almond has created a story that will speak softly yet memorably to ten year olds as well as reverberate in the echo chambers of much older readers as well.
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Monty90650, December 16, 2006 (view all comments by Monty90650)
Skellig is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Everyone can relate to Michael's experience with loneliness and fear and the difficulties that his family faces. However, into his life comes the miracle of Skellig (a wonderfully beautiful creature that Michael befriends and helps). Michael's life and family are dramatically transformed in a marvelously unexpected manner. If only we all experienced such miracles.

Everyone to whom I have recommended the book has read and loved it! It should have won the Printz Prize that year. It was far better then the competition!
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780440416029
Author:
Almond, David
Publisher:
Yearling Books
Location:
New York
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Family - General
Subject:
Children's 9-12 - Fiction - General
Subject:
Family life
Subject:
England
Subject:
Moving, Household
Subject:
Angels
Subject:
Children's 9-12 - Family
Subject:
Social Situations - Moving
Subject:
Strangers.
Subject:
Social Issues - Moving
Subject:
Family
Series Volume:
v. 23
Publication Date:
September 2000
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
192
Dimensions:
7.60x5.18x.52 in. .29 lbs.
Age Level:
09-12

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