The Book of Story Beginnings
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Cover Story
This issue’s cover illustration by David Roberts is from Julia Donaldson’s Tyrannosaurus Drip (see also Windows into Illustration). Thanks to Macmillan Children’s Books for their help with this July cover.
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The Book of Story Beginnings
This gentle fantasy spans almost a century and explores love, loss and belonging through the medium of two disappearances from The Brick, an Iowa farmhouse: Oscar Martin in 1914 and Lucy’s father nearly a century later.
Lucy’s family have moved to The Brick – a great contrast to their city life and full of inherited treasures: most notably the mysterious Book of Story Beginnings and Lucy’s aunt’s experiments in magic, stored in the attic. Both act as catalysts in a remarkable adventure in true fairytale style – a King and Queen, a pirate ship with a woman captain and a crew composed of the children related to her and Oscar, who has travelled through time.
The story is entertaining, fast-paced and full of whimsical twists but it is far from slight. Fractured family relationships are explored and restored and Lucy and Oscar both learn that love survives time and distance and that wishes can come true in a way one least expects.