The Last Grail Keeper - Hardcover

Hill, Pamela Smith

3.45

42 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823415740 ISBN 13: 9780823415748

Publisher: Holiday House, 2001

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Seventeen-year-old Felicity spends the summer with her mother who is working on an archeological dig in England where the Grail is uncovered, and Felicity learns she has a mysterious connection to the Grail.

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About the Author:

Pamela Smith Hill grew up in Springfield, Missouri, on a steady diet of Bible stories and old TV westerns. Maybe that's why she likes to write about the past. Or maybe it was Jo March in Little Women. Pamela's first real job was as a newspaper staff writer on an old fashioned Society page. She wrote about weddings and Girl Scout jamborees and old ladies who carved little statues out of gourds. Then she moved to South Dakota, where the job market for Society page writers was pretty slim. So she began a career in advertising and public relations. Over the next twenty years, she wrote about everything from Mount Rushmore to Water Piks, Navajo rugs to basketball shoes. Along the way, she lived in Kansas, Colorado, and Oregon. Then in 1994, she left the corporate world behind and started writing books for young adults. Ghost Horses was published two years later. She continues to write Young Adult fiction. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with a pair of devoted and lively flat-coated retrievers. Her husband Richard died of prostate cancer in 2005; their daughter is a mathematician who lives and works in Portland.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 6-8-This is a complicated but absorbing tale of a teen with ESP who may be a Grail Keeper from the time of King Arthur. Felicity Jones is in England with her mother, who is on sabbatical to pursue intensive research into the Arthurian legend. There is speculation that Glastonbury Tor might really be Avalon, where Arthur was taken to die. In a conversational tone and with the acknowledgment that her experiences might be hard to believe, Felicity tells her strange adventure with time travel and how she learns of her powers from Morgan le Fey. The modern teen is a believable character, and her amazement at the discovery of her special talents rings true. However, sometimes the shifts between the present and the past and the interactions with characters from the Arthurian legends are contrived and confusing. A secure familiarity with the tales will make the novel more accessible. Hill tries to parallel characters in the present with those from the legend as, for example, the present-day evil Mordraut carries out the same mission to destroy goodness as Mordred does. This story will appeal mainly to fans of fantasy and Arthurian legend.

Renee Steinberg, Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ

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