| Booktalk
#1
Lyra and Will are two teenagers
who hold the fate of the world, in fact all worlds, in their hands as they
continue their extraordinary adventure which began in The Golden Compass
and The Subtle Knife..
Armed with his magical knife,
Will battles the formidable forces in the world of the living and the world
of the dead. Lyra is a mighty warrior as well. Her most powerful tools
are her gift for reading the prophetic aletheimeter and an uncanny ability
to lie. By the end of their heroic quest, both Will and Lyra have lost
their magical weapons, but they have gained so much more. Their mystical,
dangerous journey leads them to a level of insight and understanding far
beyond their years.
(Kathy Bellin, Colorado
Blue Spruce YA Book Award, 2003)
Booktalk #2
Ama, the herdsman's daughter,
couldn't stop thinking about the sleeping girl and her mother, Mrs. Coulter.
Ama knew there were sorcerers who could easily cast sleeping spells and
it was only natural that her mother would care for her as Mrs. Coulter
did. She visited them as often as she could in the valley, listening to
the wonderful tales that the woman told and hoping for another glimpse
of the sleeping girl.
Finally, she walked the three-hours
to the monastery at Cho-Lung-Seto gain an audience with the great healer
Pagdzin tulku. She tried to be clever, changing the sex of the girl and
saying that the family was too poor to enlist his aid. But, even though
the healer gave her some powder for the sleeper to inhale, he also told
her to tell the whole truth the next time she came and not only part of
it.
The next evening she hurried
to the valley to tell the woman what she had done to help wake the sleeper
and become friends with the woman and her daughter. But, the woman and
her monkey were nowhere to be seen. Ama crept further into the cave where
she could see the enchanted girl. Maybe she could wake her before the woman
returned . . .
She heard sounds on the path
outside and darted behind a rock at the side of the cave in embarrassment
for being where she should not have gone without permission. The woman
came in, saw the food Ama had left, and then turned to mixing herbs and
powders into heating water. She turned to the sleeper who seemed to be
struggling into wakefulness, then force fed the girl the concoction she
had made up with the help of the monkey. The girl was forced to swallow
the drink and lapsed back into sleep.
It was dark and the moon had
risen before AMA and her own daemon were able to sneak out past the sleeping
woman and her monkey.
"She lied!" exclaimed Ama.
"She lied to us!" But, AMA had the little package with from the healer.
And she knew how to use it.
Sam Marsh for The
Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award |
