Retro Childhood Review: A Serendipity Book

So on some Autumn morning Look into the frosty pool. You’ll see in your reflection That you’re a Flutterby too! This is a bit of an odd review, but as I was looking through my bookshelves I happened upon one of the most precious books in my collection, Flutterby, written by Stephen Cosgrove and illustrated […]

Retro Childhood Review: The Egypt Game

But, actually, that was the way with all of the Egypt Game. Nobody ever planned it ahead, at least, not very far. Ideas began and grew and afterwards it was hard to remember just how. That was one of the mysterious and fascinating things about it. Not every single book that I read as a […]

Retro Childhood Review: Fog Magic

“It’s the things you were born to that give you satisfaction in this world, Greta. Leastwise, that’s what I think. And maybe the fog’s one of them. Not happiness, mind! Satisfaction isn’t always happiness by a long sight; then again, it isn’t sorrow either. But the rocks and the spruces and the fogs or your […]

Retro Childhood Review: Firebrat

“It will only be for a month, Molly.” “Why me?” she wailed, forgetting her vow of silence. “Why not Betty? She’s older.” “Because I think you’ll do a better job than Betty. You’re the reader in this family. The storyteller… Your grandma’s getting awfully forgetful, Molly. Ever since Grandpa died, she’s been living in the […]

Retro Childhood Review: The Last Unicorn

“I was born mortal, and I have been immortal for a long, foolish time, and one day I will be mortal again; so I know something that a unicorn cannot know. Whatever can die is beautiful — more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. […]

Retro Childhood Review: The Neverending Story

Bastian Balthazar Bux’s passion was books. If you’ve never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger — If you’ve never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well meaning person has switched off […]