Skelton, Matthew.
ENDYMION SPRING
New York : Delacorte, 2006
IL 5-8, RL 5.9
ISBN 0385903979
(2 booktalks)

The book must have its way.  From the very beginning when Endymion Spring first set eyes on the paper, he knew that this was special.  So special that anyone trying to even touch the paper would be greeted with a bite!  How could that be?  But Endymion Spring, a young apprentice of Johann Gutenberg, is allowed to take the paper and he knows that he must protect it.  He sets off on a harrowing journey to Oxford to find a place to keep the book safe.  But is it?  And what will happen hundreds of years in the future when a young boy from America happens upon the book while walking through the stacks at the Bodlein Library?

Booktalk #2

Blake Winters is bored. While his mother spends hours of research as a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Blake and his younger sister amuse themselves in the huge University library. As he absently drags his finger along a shelf of dusty old books, one of them grabs back and his hand, pricks his finger, and draws blood ... Wait! Books don't have a life of their own - or do they? The book seems to mold itself to the size of Blake's hand, but the pages are blank. Fascinated, Blake watches the pages slowly begin to reveal a spidery writing that only he can see - and the story they tell seems to be an endless riddle. Determined to unravel the riddle and solve the mystery of the book, Blake and his sister Duck follow clues deeper into the world of Oxford scholars, the old library, a dusty used book store, a mysterious homeless stranger and his dog - clues that take them all the way back to the dawn of the printed word on a journey that is threatening and almost fatal - but they won't stop until they have the answers.   (Rhode Island Teen Book Award nominee 2007-2008)