Synopsis
A large-format, colour edition of this magical novel which weaves together over fifty world tales -- of immense appeal to both adults and children. One day a story fell from heaven and landed on a giant's tongue...' The Story Giant is a master illusionist and the ur-storyteller. In his memory exists every tale ever told in the world -- except for one, which has eluded him for millennia. In a last desperate attempt to track down this lost tale, he draws four children from the different corners of the globe into his castle while they sleep, there to exchange the tales they know from their own cultures, to see if between them they can piece together the elusive missing story. For if he cannot track it down and install it in his memory, the whole facade of the castle will crumble and fall, and the Story Giant himself will die. And if he does, so will all the stories, and the world will be a poorer, duller, grimmer place. Fifty tales are told within this magical framework in Brian Patten's inimitable style -- from Bruh Rabbit to the tale of how St George killed the Dragon (except it wasn't St George -- it was his mother, with a pudding...) but none of them are the missing tale.
The castle falls; the giant dies. But all is not lost -- the four children dream themselves back to the ruins to concoct the missing tale themselves...
From the Publisher
This was Sunday Times' Children's Book Of The Week.
' a wonderful anthology in which fables from Aesop rub shoulders with Arabic folklore, Irish fairy tales, Australian aboriginal legends and Japanese myths. The tales are punctuated by conversations between the children, which remind us that stories occurring in one part of the world can also have mysteriously arisen in distant places, in other times. .. The tales, although all entertaining, communicate the pointlessness of war and are lessons in how to make the most of life. The book is a beautiful package, to which Chris Riddell brings has characteristic quirkiness, spookiness and charm. Patten, you can tell, loves these stories, and loves the idea of stories. By repeating them, he seeks, like the giant, to keep them alive.
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