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Summary
Summary
The much-anticipated sequel to the multiple-award-winning novel THE SEEING STONE.
Arthur de Caldicot has achieved his dream: He now serves as squire to Lord Stephen of Holt Castle. But this new world opens up fresh visions as well as old concerns. Arthur longs to escape the shadow of his unfeeling father and meet his birth mother. To marry the beautiful Winnie, but maintain his ties with his friend Gatty. And to become a Crusader, with all the questions of might and right involved.
Just as he so brilliantly did in THE SEEING STONE, Kevin Crossley-Holland weaves Arthurian legend with everyday medieval life in the unforgettable story of one hero's coming of age.
Summary
The second thrilling novel in Kevin Crossley-Holland's bestselling Arthur trilogy
Arthur de Caldicot has achieved his dream: He now serves as squire to Lord Stephen of Holt Castle. But this new world opens up fresh visions as well as old concerns. Arthur longs to escape the shadow of his unfeeling father and meet his birth mother. To marry the beautiful Winnie, but maintain his ties with his friend Gatty. And to become a Crusader, with all the questions of might and right involved.
Just as he so brilliantly did in THE SEEING STONE, Kevin Crossley-Holland weaves Arthurian legend with everyday medieval life in the unforgettable story of one hero's coming of age.
Author Notes
Kevin Crossley-Holland is a well-known poet, a prize-winning children's author, and a translator.
Crossley-Holland has translated Beowulf and The Exeter Book of Riddles from the Anglo-Saxon. He has collaborated with composers Nicola Lefanu (The Green Children and The Wildman), Rupert Bawden (The Sailor's Tale), Sir Arthur Bliss, William Mathias, and Stephen Paulus.
Crossley-Holland's book The Seeing Stone won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal, and the Tir na n-Og Award. The trilogy has won critical acclaim and been translated into twenty-five languages. His recent and forthcoming books are The Hidden Roads: A Memoir of Childhood, Bracelet of Bones and his new and selected poems The Mountains of Norfolk.
Crossley-Holland often lectures abroad on behalf of the British Council and offers poetry and prose workshops and talks on the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, King Arthur, heroines and heroes, and myth, legend and folk-tale.
Kevin Crossley-Holland is an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, a patron of the Society for Storytelling, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives on the north Norfolk coast in East Anglia with his wife and children.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Kevin Crossley-Holland is a well-known poet, a prize-winning children's author, and a translator.
Crossley-Holland has translated Beowulf and The Exeter Book of Riddles from the Anglo-Saxon. He has collaborated with composers Nicola Lefanu (The Green Children and The Wildman), Rupert Bawden (The Sailor's Tale), Sir Arthur Bliss, William Mathias, and Stephen Paulus.
Crossley-Holland's book The Seeing Stone won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal, and the Tir na n-Og Award. The trilogy has won critical acclaim and been translated into twenty-five languages. His recent and forthcoming books are The Hidden Roads: A Memoir of Childhood, Bracelet of Bones and his new and selected poems The Mountains of Norfolk.
Crossley-Holland often lectures abroad on behalf of the British Council and offers poetry and prose workshops and talks on the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, King Arthur, heroines and heroes, and myth, legend and folk-tale.
Kevin Crossley-Holland is an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, a patron of the Society for Storytelling, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives on the north Norfolk coast in East Anglia with his wife and children.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (10)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Kevin Crossley-Holland's sequel (Scholastic 2002) to the Seeing Stone (Scholastic, 2001) is the second title in his Arthur trilogy. Set in 1200, At the Crossing-Places continues and embellishes the story of young Arthur de Caldicot as he prepares to leave the comfort of familiar surroundings and companions to enter into service as the squire of Lord Stephen de Holt on the Fourth Crusade. Actor Michael Maloney's cultured British accent vividly evokes the sights and sounds of medieval village life during a tumultuous period in English history. However, the voice of Arthur himself is perhaps a bit too polished for that of a lad raised without benefit of formal education, and insufficient differences in the voices of various characters may prove occasionally confusing to young listeners. Still, fascination with the parallel world of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table unveiled through the magic of the seeing stone will entice listeners to persevere to the final chapter.-Cindy Lombardo, Orrville Public Library, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This second book of the Arthur Trilogy continues the tale begun with The Seeing Stone, which, as PW said in its starred review, "inventively reworks the legend of the Round Table." Here 13-year-old Arthur begins life as a squire. Ages 9-12. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Middle School, High School) Turn-of-the-thirteenth-century Arthur, who first observed the parallel adventures of his legendary predecessor in The Seeing Stone (the eponymous magical talisman given him by Merlin, who exists in both eras), is now fourteen, squire to the just and kindly Lord Stephen de Holt, and soon to join him on crusade. Meanwhile, the boy struggles with his recently discovered origins: he wishes the bad-tempered Sir William hadn't sired him; he can't marry Grace as planned, as she's his half-sister. Instead, he thinks of courting the volatile ten-year-old Winnie de Verdon (Guinevere?), though surely his heart would belong to longtime best friend Gatty if only she were well born. The alternating scenes in the seeing stone, too, concern the many guises, disguises, loyalties, and treacheries of love at Camelot: Morgause, the half-sister who seduces King Arthur; Nimue, who traps Merlin under a rock; and more. This web of story fills Arthur's imagination, illuminating his understanding of the present. ""What happens in my life and what happens inside the stone are often connected like sounds and echoes,"" he observes. ""What I see in the stone sometimes seems like a promise, sometimes like a warning."" In the end, as the knights he sees in the stone begin their quests for the Grail, he sets out for the Holy Land. Though this volume is less dramatically intense than the first, and some of the crusaders' ideas seem rather pacific and multicultural for their time, Crossley-Holland once again evokes a rich and credible panoply of circumstances and characters (well over one hundred in the useful list provided). Much is left open: does Arthur's left-handedness refer only to his (illegitimate) birth, or to something more significant (if not sinister)? Who exactly is the mother who lives at anagrammatic Catmole, the Welsh manor he'll inherit from Sir William? Book Three should reveal not only ""what happens"" but also the true design of this absorbing and carefully wrought trilogy. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
It's the year 1200, and young Arthur de Caldicot is at the crossing-places, those murky, in-between places not quite defined: dawn and dusk, New Year's Day, the foreshore, and the times and places of our lives where change is likely. Arthur is living in the Marches-part English, part Welsh-beginning a new life as squire for Lord Stephen at Holt Castle. He now knows that Sir John and Lady Helen are not his real parents; he knows his father is a murderer but doesn't know his real mother. In this second of the planned trilogy, Crossley-Holland (The Seeing Stone, 2001, etc.) takes readers along with Arthur de Caldicot through the seeing stone Merlin gave him to witness the drama of the Arthurian tales: Arthur's coronation, Excalibur, the Round Table, Morgan Le Fay, Sir Gawain, and the Holy Grail. Certain themes and moral ideas continue from the first volume: "Who we are isn't only a matter of blood; it's what we make of ourselves." "If God loves us all the same, why doesn't He treat us all the same?" Arthur grows up with guidance from Lord Stephen, Merlin, and the lessons of the seeing stone. This is a handsome volume with 101 chapters, a spacious design, and page decorations based on 13th-century ornamental lettering. Though many issues are left up in the air by the end of the lengthy work, the ending itself is a crossing-place. Arthur is not home nor has he made it to Jerusalem. He is living his dream of being a squire on a Crusade, but he yearns to be home, too. He has yet to find his mother, and he wonders about his new relationship with Winnie de Verdon. Readers will look forward to the third installment of this grand epic tale to see what Arthur makes of himself. (cast of characters, author's note, word list) (Fiction. 12+)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8. This sequel to The Seeing Stone (2001), which begins in January 1300, involves crossing places in time, in space, and even within characters. Like many 13-year-olds, Arthur himself is in transition, moving from Caldicot Manor to Holt Castle, from page to squire, from boy to man. Now that he has learned his father's identity, he struggles to come to terms with that knowledge, and he resolves to discover who his mother is, as well. More mysterious still, his own identity has been jolted by the revelation of his parentage and confused by his strange affinity with Arthur-in-the-stone, who is like, yet unlike, himself. By the end of the novel, Arthur and Lord Stephen, to whom he is in service, have traveled to Champagne and sworn allegiance to Count Thibaud and his crusade to the Holy Land. Like many middle books of trilogies, this one revels in storytelling and character development without the need to introduce settings and characters, create a thundering climax, or tie up every loose strand of plot. Readers who devoured The Seeing Stone will happily fall under the spell of Arthur's first-person narrative again. Short, satisfying chapters telling of events in his life are again interspersed with vivid tales of what he sees in the stone given him by Merlin: traditional stories of King Arthur unfolding, fresh and dramatic, for him and for readers as well. --Carolyn Phelan
Publisher's Weekly Review
This second book of the Arthur Trilogy continues the tale begun with The Seeing Stone, which, as PW said in its starred review, "inventively reworks the legend of the Round Table." Here 13-year-old Arthur begins life as a squire. Ages 9-12. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Middle School, High School) Turn-of-the-thirteenth-century Arthur, who first observed the parallel adventures of his legendary predecessor in The Seeing Stone (the eponymous magical talisman given him by Merlin, who exists in both eras), is now fourteen, squire to the just and kindly Lord Stephen de Holt, and soon to join him on crusade. Meanwhile, the boy struggles with his recently discovered origins: he wishes the bad-tempered Sir William hadn't sired him; he can't marry Grace as planned, as she's his half-sister. Instead, he thinks of courting the volatile ten-year-old Winnie de Verdon (Guinevere?), though surely his heart would belong to longtime best friend Gatty if only she were well born. The alternating scenes in the seeing stone, too, concern the many guises, disguises, loyalties, and treacheries of love at Camelot: Morgause, the half-sister who seduces King Arthur; Nimue, who traps Merlin under a rock; and more. This web of story fills Arthur's imagination, illuminating his understanding of the present. ""What happens in my life and what happens inside the stone are often connected like sounds and echoes,"" he observes. ""What I see in the stone sometimes seems like a promise, sometimes like a warning."" In the end, as the knights he sees in the stone begin their quests for the Grail, he sets out for the Holy Land. Though this volume is less dramatically intense than the first, and some of the crusaders' ideas seem rather pacific and multicultural for their time, Crossley-Holland once again evokes a rich and credible panoply of circumstances and characters (well over one hundred in the useful list provided). Much is left open: does Arthur's left-handedness refer only to his (illegitimate) birth, or to something more significant (if not sinister)? Who exactly is the mother who lives at anagrammatic Catmole, the Welsh manor he'll inherit from Sir William? Book Three should reveal not only ""what happens"" but also the true design of this absorbing and carefully wrought trilogy. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8. This sequel to The Seeing Stone (2001), which begins in January 1300, involves crossing places in time, in space, and even within characters. Like many 13-year-olds, Arthur himself is in transition, moving from Caldicot Manor to Holt Castle, from page to squire, from boy to man. Now that he has learned his father's identity, he struggles to come to terms with that knowledge, and he resolves to discover who his mother is, as well. More mysterious still, his own identity has been jolted by the revelation of his parentage and confused by his strange affinity with Arthur-in-the-stone, who is like, yet unlike, himself. By the end of the novel, Arthur and Lord Stephen, to whom he is in service, have traveled to Champagne and sworn allegiance to Count Thibaud and his crusade to the Holy Land. Like many middle books of trilogies, this one revels in storytelling and character development without the need to introduce settings and characters, create a thundering climax, or tie up every loose strand of plot. Readers who devoured The Seeing Stone will happily fall under the spell of Arthur's first-person narrative again. Short, satisfying chapters telling of events in his life are again interspersed with vivid tales of what he sees in the stone given him by Merlin: traditional stories of King Arthur unfolding, fresh and dramatic, for him and for readers as well. --Carolyn Phelan
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Kevin Crossley-Holland's sequel (Scholastic 2002) to the Seeing Stone (Scholastic, 2001) is the second title in his Arthur trilogy. Set in 1200, At the Crossing-Places continues and embellishes the story of young Arthur de Caldicot as he prepares to leave the comfort of familiar surroundings and companions to enter into service as the squire of Lord Stephen de Holt on the Fourth Crusade. Actor Michael Maloney's cultured British accent vividly evokes the sights and sounds of medieval village life during a tumultuous period in English history. However, the voice of Arthur himself is perhaps a bit too polished for that of a lad raised without benefit of formal education, and insufficient differences in the voices of various characters may prove occasionally confusing to young listeners. Still, fascination with the parallel world of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table unveiled through the magic of the seeing stone will entice listeners to persevere to the final chapter.-Cindy Lombardo, Orrville Public Library, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
It's the year 1200, and young Arthur de Caldicot is at the crossing-places, those murky, in-between places not quite defined: dawn and dusk, New Year's Day, the foreshore, and the times and places of our lives where change is likely. Arthur is living in the Marches-part English, part Welsh-beginning a new life as squire for Lord Stephen at Holt Castle. He now knows that Sir John and Lady Helen are not his real parents; he knows his father is a murderer but doesn't know his real mother. In this second of the planned trilogy, Crossley-Holland (The Seeing Stone, 2001, etc.) takes readers along with Arthur de Caldicot through the seeing stone Merlin gave him to witness the drama of the Arthurian tales: Arthur's coronation, Excalibur, the Round Table, Morgan Le Fay, Sir Gawain, and the Holy Grail. Certain themes and moral ideas continue from the first volume: "Who we are isn't only a matter of blood; it's what we make of ourselves." "If God loves us all the same, why doesn't He treat us all the same?" Arthur grows up with guidance from Lord Stephen, Merlin, and the lessons of the seeing stone. This is a handsome volume with 101 chapters, a spacious design, and page decorations based on 13th-century ornamental lettering. Though many issues are left up in the air by the end of the lengthy work, the ending itself is a crossing-place. Arthur is not home nor has he made it to Jerusalem. He is living his dream of being a squire on a Crusade, but he yearns to be home, too. He has yet to find his mother, and he wonders about his new relationship with Winnie de Verdon. Readers will look forward to the third installment of this grand epic tale to see what Arthur makes of himself. (cast of characters, author's note, word list) (Fiction. 12+)
