The Stones Are Hatching - Hardcover

McCaughrean, Geraldine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060287659 ISBN 13: 9780060287658

Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books, 2000

Synopsis

After centuries of undisturbed slumber, the Stoor Worm -- the World Eater -- is waking. A creature of monstrous proportions and unimaginable evil, the Stoor Worm must be destroyed. Already its murderous hatchlings are bringing terror and destruction to every corner of Britain. And an odd trio--a Fool, a Maiden, and a Horse -- is desperately trying to convince one quite ordinary boy that he alone can save the world. Drawing upon the centuiries-old lore of Britain's Old Magic, acclaimed novelist Geraldine McCaughrean has created a bold, original fantasy. Richly textured, this gripping tale of perilous adventure is filled with unforgettable scenes of terror, heroism, and treachery in the timeless fight between good and evil. It was from out at sea that Phelim got his first glimpse of the Stoor Worm: Alexia pointed it out to him. A mass of land thrust out into the sea, interrupting the smooth curve of the coast. Within it and behind it, the land was far higher than round about, and it had a reddish tinge to it. There was no eye, no ear, no claw, no thorny tail. It was simply a piece of land. How can you be afraid of a piece of land? Phelim, who had been expecting the fright of his life, felt absolutely nothing. The Stoor Worm was simply a morsel of legend, untrue. "It doesn't even look like a dragon," he said, half laughing with relief. "Well, that is only the snout," Alexia said.

About this title

About the Author

Geraldine McCaughrean is the winner of England's most prestigious children's book award, the Carnegie Medal, for A Pack of Lies. An expert in world mythology, she is the author of The Golden Hoard, The Silver Treasure, and The Bronze Cauldron. Other prizewinning books for young readers by Ms. McCaughrean include Plundering Paradise (published in the U.S. as The Pirate's Son), winner of England's Smarties Book Prize Bronze Award; Forever X, short-listed for the Carnegie Medal; and Gold Dust, winner of the 1994 Beefeater Children's Novel Award. Ms. McCaughrean makes her debut on the HarperCollins list with The Stones Are Hatching. She lives in Berkshire, England.

Reviews

Grade 5-8-Careful character development, a vivid British setting, and a skillful use of language combine with McCaughrean's vast knowledge of world legend and folklore to create a historical fantasy that should appeal to a wide variety of readers. Phelim Green, 11, knows it won't be an ordinary day when he finds the cast-iron stove pushed away from the wall and all the furniture piled up against the door. Then a greasy, dirt-encrusted Domovoy, an ancient Slavic house-guardian, emerges from behind the stove. According to the Domovoy, only Phelim can slay the Stoor Worm and save the world. The boy finds that he cannot escape his quest and sets off, accompanied by Alexia, the Maiden; Mad Sweeney, the Fool; and the Obby Oss, a two-legged, talking Horse. They explain how the guns and mortars and screams of the dying of World War I have begun to wake the Stoor Worm that has slept for centuries. On his quest, he must climb up to its cavernous mouth where eggs of stone are hatching into every sort of disgusting, dreaded creature from the Otherworld. The story is populated with a catalog of creatures from the dark side of myth and legend. Malevolent faeries are in search of unwilling human brides, corn wives are slaughtering reapers in the fields, and a lumbering, transparent sack of insatiable digestive organs pursues Phelim and Alexia down a well. However, at the heart of this fantasy, serious issues are paramount. Readers will think about loyalty and friendship, bravery and cowardice, perseverance and love, and learn that the horrors of war and the loss of a friend are worse than all of the monsters Phelim encounters.
Susan L. Rogers, Chestnut Hill Academy, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

McCaughrean (Pirate's Son, 1999, etc.) sends a lad through as fine an array of malign faeries, usteys, corn wives, soul-stealing merrows, skinless muckelavees, and other deadly bogles as ever lurked in Celtic folklore, in hopes of slaying a dragon literally half the size of Wales. It all comes upon 11-year-old Phelim suddenly, when his home's supernatural guardian, the Domovoy, appears, calling him Jack O'Green and insisting that he better get a move on. It seems that the guns of the WWI have not only disturbed the 2,000-year sleep of the Stoor Worm that lies along the Welsh coast, but have set her stone eggs to hatching out all the creatures of nightmare to boot. Frightened and mystified but gaining confidence as he goes, Phelim acquires some unlikely companions--Alexia, a young witch; Sweeney, a soldier driven mad in the Napoleonic Wars; and for transportation, a headless, ungainly Obby Oss. He narrowly escapes death several times, and learns what he needs to know from his adventures to accomplish his seemingly hopeless task. McCaughrean creates a world turned upside down, in which creatures thought safely tucked away in entertaining legends assume terrifying reality, and old local blood rites are revived in self defense: as the Obby Oss says, Magic is not nice. Magics wuz never nice. Nor, as it turns out, is Phelim, quite, for at the end he dispatches his trollish big sister to the ends of the earth on a water sprite's back for placing their father, the real Jack O'Green, into an asylum. Despite the distracting family subplot, not since William Mayne's Hob and the Goblins (1994) has the Old Magic risen in the modern world with such resounding menace. (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harpercollins Childrens Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060287659
• ISBN 13: 9780060287658
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230