Silverwing - Softcover

Oppel, Kenneth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006481442 ISBN 13: 9780006481447

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997

Synopsis

This captivating novel should be enjoyed by both young children and adults. Kenneth Oppel is the only author I know who has dared use a young bat as a protaganist, and the reward to the reader is a beautiful glimse into a bat's black and white world. Young readers in particular should be able to identify with Shade, whose longings and affections are remarkably human and always understandable. As well as being an excellent adventure story, it is also an educative introduction to bat rituals.

About this title

About the Author

Kenneth Oppel is the author of numerous books for young readers. His award-winning Silverwing trilogy has sold over a million copies worldwide and been adapted as an animated TV series and stage play. Airborn won a Michael L. Printz Honor Book Award and the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award for children’s literature; its sequel, Skybreaker, was a New York Times bestseller and was named Children’s Novel of the Year by the London Times. He is also the author of Half Brother, This Dark Endeavor, Such Wicked Intent, and The Boundless. Born on Canada’s Vancouver Island, he has lived in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Canada; in England and Ireland; and now resides in Toronto with his wife and children. Visit him at KennethOppel.ca.

From Kirkus Reviews

A small bat's curiosity touches off a war of extermination against all his kind in this action-packed odyssey from the author of Dead Water Zone (1993). In satisfying his desire to catch just a glimpse of the sun, young Shade defies a punishment imposed millions of years before when bats refused to fight in the Great War Between the Birds and the Beasts. In swift retribution, owls burn the ancient nursery of the silverwing bats, forcing them to depart early for Hibernaculum, their winter roost. A sudden storm blows Shade away from the flock; in the chase to catch up, he meets Marina, a faithful companion of another bat species; acquires a nemesis in Goth, a huge, seemingly indestructible tropical bat with cannibalistic tendencies; escapes capture above ground and below; encounters a host of allies and enemies; and finds several mysteries to pursue--why other animals are so ready to wipe the bats out, what the silver bands humans give some bats portend, and especially what became of his banded father. Replete with appealing characters, scary adversaries, bat lore, natural history, unanswered questions, and conflicting theologies, the story takes on a promising epic sweep; readers will look forward to the sequels that Oppel's ending guarantees. (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0006481442
• ISBN 13: 9780006481447
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English