Wild Magic

by Cat Weatherill

Overview

The Pied Piper had his reasons for enchanting the children of Hamelin and stealing them away—ones rooted in a deep history of wild magic. Mari and her brother Jakob are among the children who followed the piper's song, and they are now trapped in a beautiful but cruel world inhabited by a horrid Beast. They must remain there until he finds the right child, the chosen one, who can lift his century old curse. But the price of breaking the curse is a terrible one. This fast-paced, richly fantastical continuation of a familiar tale is a powerful story of a family torn apart by tragedy, and the magical adventure that heals them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141321141
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	08/28/2007
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

CAT WEATHERILL is a performance storyteller, appearing internationally at festivals, on British radio and television, and at schools throughout the United Kingdom. She lives in Wales. Visit her Web site at www.catweatherill.co.uk.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4-6

Weatherill uses events and characters from Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" in this novel that begins with the mesmerizing Piper leading the town's children away. They follow him through a magical door that opens to a place inside Hamelin Hill. Right away, their excited giddiness turns to panic and fear. They're trapped. "When the door closed, summer had been left behind. In here it was winter." For the first 50 or so pages, the main character is a girl named Marianna, whose disabled brother, Jakob, can't keep up with the others and becomes, at least briefly, the only Hamelin child not trapped inside the Hill. Then, the story shifts to tell the backstory of the Piper. Readers learn that he is half human, half elf, and has been cursed to turn into a beast whenever the moon is full. His salvation can only come from a child with special powers in a town overrun by rats. Classic fantasy themes like loyalty, transformation, and sacrifice are part of this interesting book. Especially intriguing are the scenes of Marianna changing into a fox and experiencing the world as a wild animal. But the plot suffers from multiple points of view-from Marianna to the Piper, and then on to Jakob and even Marianna and Jakob's father-that aren't done in an integrated way, giving an overall disjointed feel. Buy if you have an avid fantasy following and/or a large collection.-Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL

School Library Journal

After five sparkling initial chapters, this Pied Piper retelling takes a sudden dive in quality and seems to switch genres. The opening scene features blissfully enchanted children dancing through Hamelin, trailing the Pied Piper away from their town forever. He leads them under Hamelin Hill and out the other side into Elvendale, an idyllic landscape of lush meadows and cozy farms, populated by "tall, handsome people . . . with long, flowing hair, bright eyes, and a stealthy, catlike grace to their movements." The Piper is such an elf, but cursed for centuries for killing a stag in a forbidden forest: Each full moon, he bleeds afresh from a long-healed thigh wound and morphs into a bloodthirsty Beast. He steals Hamelin's children in the hopes of passing his curse along to an unknown special child with elven powers-Marianne or crippled brother Jakob, who are unknowingly half-elf. Weatherill's prose is warm and appealing on the Pied Piper arc, but her elven magic and curses vary between cliched and too random, rendering the overall piece forgettable. A shame. (Fantasy. 8-10)

Kirkus Reviews