“At first she’s repelled think they are made out of smashed elves, but then when it’s explained they are made of sugar chocolate, eggs, flour and a ” magical” ingredient ends up eating several with an effect she was not expecting!”
“After five days the pool was so shallow that even little Annad, que was only five years old, could touch the bottom with her hand without getting her sleeve wet. And still the stream failed to flow. On the evening of the sixth day the worried people met in the market square to tall. “The bukshah could drink at all today, ” said Lann, the oldest person in the village and once the greatest fighter. ‘If we do not act soon, they will die’.”
“Annad could not imagine the valley without the village. But Roawn could. Reading the old stories in the house of books, listening half asleep to Timon under the teaching tree, and most of all, sitting on the grass by the stream while the bukshah grazed around him in the silence of the morning, he had often imagined this place as the first settler must have seen it.”
“They had been walking beside the dry bed of the stream for hours and had let the village for behind. Looking back, Rowan could no longer see even the tall stone walls of the mill, the highest building, because the trees had screened in from view. In front of them, like massive wall, rose the Mountain. In another two hours, the others said, they would reach it. The map showed clearly that they must begin their climb at the place where the water gushed from its underground tunnel to form the stream.”
Heart’s Delight opens with a 16-year-old boy poised over a desk. He is alone in the room, going through the left over items of a relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Ann-Kathrin. As he systematically destroys each object, he replays a scene from their relationship that relates to it.
“Losing concentration, Yukin almost fell as the land dipped beneath the grasses of the plains. Somehow he kept his footing, aware that the hunter birds were cruising the air currents in search of him. He knew he had no choice other than to flee.”
“The horsemen swept across the corn-yellow grasses of the hinterland screaming and shouting to arouse fear. The clans people dispersed like scuttling roaches to be run down and either killed or captured.”
“The man recovered his breath and went to get his mule. He tied the animal to a tree and walked over to the motionless robber, still lying in the road. Angrily he kicked the body.”
A fantasy book of British folk type rhymes written by a modern poet. The book’s strength is Trina Schart Hyman illustrations. one poem about a girl obsessed with the ocean is rather good, and “Figgie Bobbin is amusing; the Zig Zag the same.
“Meanwhile, in the hold, things were far from ship-shape! ‘Open up, all of ‘ee,’ whispered Cut-throat Jake, and one by one the lid of each brandy barrel opened to reveal a member of Jake’s gang inside.”
“Then Mr. Pepperpot came home. And, just as he opened the door, Mrs. Pepperpot turned back to her usual size. So they sat down and ate their supper. And the old woman said nothing about having been as small as a pepperpot, because old women don’t usually talk about such things.”
“Mr Shoebottom is an alcoholic petrol station owner who repairs the gnomes’ boat after it is discovered by his son. The Farmer is Nanny Goat’s owner. In Down The Bright Stream, Baldmoney uses his best Sunday shirt to build Wonderbird.”