Booktalk
Title: Endymion Spring
Author: Matthew Skelton
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Date Published: 2006
Genre: Fantasy
Grade Level of audience: 6th and 7th grade
Booktalker: Jennifer Bean, Media Specialist
Background Note: This booktalk is written to appeal to 6th and 7th grade honors students who love fantasy and reading. The author is an Oxford trained expert on the history of books and printing.
Booktalk:
Imagine that you are left alone in a huge library full of rare, antique booksÖvery valuable old booksÖbooks with amazing hand drawn pictures and words written by scribes from the middle agesÖbooks you aren't even supposed to touch without gloves on and special permission! Would you be tempted to pull one of the books off the shelf? Maybe even sneak one out of the library? That's exactly what happens to Blake Winters in the book Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton. Blake is wandering through the library at Oxford University in England where his mom is working, when he suddenly feels strangely drawn to one particular shelf, to one particular bookÖ a book with an old cracked leather binding and a strange clasp that looks strangely like a dragon's head [show book]. The book seems to call to him, and he reaches out to touch itÖ suddenly his finger is bleedingÖ almost as if the dragon clasp bit him! [reach out and back as if grabbing the book] Putting his pain and fear aside, Blake pulls the book off the shelf, opens it [do this with book] --and finds nothing but blank pages! But then- as he looks closer, the book begins to move itself in his hand, the pages turn, and a mysterious riddle suddenly appears [read from p. 36]:
"When summer and winter in autumn divide
the sun will uncover a secret inside.
Should winter from summer irrevocably part
the whole of the book will fall quickly apart.
Yet if the seasons join hands together
the order of things will last forever.
These are the words of Endymion Spring.
Bring only the insight the inside brings."
What does it mean? What is the secret inside? Blake and his sister Duck are determined to find out. The mysterious book that has chosen Blake to uncover its secrets writes strange riddles that only Blake can see each time he opens the cover. The words of the book send Blake and Duck on a quest that leads them through the darker side of Oxford University, all the way back to the origins of the book in the 1400s in the workshop of a man named Johann Gutenberg [is that name familiar to anyone??? Stop to discuss.] The problem is, someone, some shadowy figure, perhaps even a member of the rare books society their mom is working with, is desperate to get their hands on the magical book too- and when Blake opens the book again - he and Duck discover that [show black page, p. 235 ] someone is watching them! [snap book shut suddenly] If you want to find out what happens to Blake and his sister, and if they are able to solve the riddles of Endymion Spring, you'll just have to read the book yourself!
More information / Curriculum suggestions:
- Could be paired with Inkspell and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke for a booktalk on stories involving magical books or with the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman which is also set at Oxford.
- The story could be booktalked to language arts classes studying fantasy or the history of books and printing, or to social studies classes studying medieval European history.
- The riddle could be projected on a screen as you read it so that students can read along.
- After the booktalk you could project the web site: http://www.randomhouse.com/teens/endymion/ and have student's try to solve some of the riddles about the book there.
- You might mention that the book is being made into a movie by Warner Bros. that is set to be released sometime in 2007.
Book cover reprinted from Amazon.com