Title: Skellig

Author: Almond, David

Book Preview:

The boy crept into the old creaky garage and with each step it quivered and shook.  Then he heard a noise in the corner behind lots of junk.  It was the sound of breathing.  The boy cautiously stepped nearer to the noise.  To his surprise a man who looked as though he was made of stone slouched in a chair, sleeping.  Together, the boy and his friend discover the mystery of this magical creature.

Rating:

I gave this book four stars because I thought it was a very interesting story. I thought the author was very creative and original with his writing. Another reason I gave Skellig four stars is because each event was described with such great detail that I couldn’t put the book down.

I really liked this book’s ending because it summarizes the whole story into one paragraph. Also, I thought this ending was very unique. Most books that are like this one usually end with everyone getting what they wanted, but Skellig ended in a short and mysterious way. It made me wonder about lots of things that the author did not explain, which was another reason why I liked this book’s ending. The author also made the ending a big cliffhanger so it would make the reader ask a lot of questions, which I did.

I liked how this book had such great description. Every object, personality, expression, and scene was described so well that I could picture the events in my mind without trying to guess what everything looked like.

Also, the characters and their features were described very well, too. For example, the author wrote," His face was very pale and cracked and it looked as tough as leather."

I really liked this book’s interesting introduction. It grabbed my attention as soon as I started to read. What made the beginning better than other books was that the author didn’t start off with a character saying, " Hi my name is…," or, " Let me tell you what just happened". He just went right into an exciting topic that would catch the reader’s interest.

One thing that could be improved is the organization. I thought some chapters, paragraphs, or pages didn’t really go along with the story, which made it a little hard to understand what was going on. For example, first the boy and his friend are going on an adventure, then they start talking about fledglings, which are baby birds. I think the author included these little bits of information because he wanted to add more details to the story so the characters seemed like they were doing more things besides going on their adventures.

If the characters were made more interesting the book would be a lot better. Some of the characters were not as exciting as others because they were not talked about long enough. For example, the adults didn’t play a major role in the story so they were described briefly. This made them less interesting to read about. The author should have described the minor characters more, so they would be more exciting to read about. I think the author didn’t write much about some characters because he thought they were not that important to the story. [Brittany]