Castle Merlin (Puffin Books)

by Ursula Moray Williams

Paperback, 1974

Status

Available

Call number

823

Publication

Puffin Books (1974), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 128 pages

Description

On holiday at a castle named for merlins, a kind of falcon, an eleven-year-old girl is not sure that all the events she witnesses occur in the twentieth century.

User reviews

LibraryThing member AbigailAdams26
Young Susie Dixon, willful and self-involved, is determined to go away to holiday-camp, despite the objections of her family. Unable to explain just why it is that she MUST go on this holiday, Susie nevertheless carries the day, and soon finds herself at Castle Merlin, a fortified manor in northern
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England, lying close to Hadrian's Wall. Here she has a series of extraordinary encounters with Dame Alys, a medieval lady - famed for her merlin hawking and for the rare "Book of Merlins" that she authored - in whose honor Castle Merlin was named. As Susie struggles to understand her odd experiences, and to relate to her fellow-camper, Bryan, she gradually gains a new awareness and empathy for those around her.

In this time-slip adventure, reminiscent in many ways of Philippa Pearce's classic Tom's Midnight Garden, or some of the works of Ruth M. Arthur, the echoes of the past resurface in the present, precipitating change and growth on the part of the protagonist. Of all the Ursula Moray Williams titles I have read thus far, this has by far been the most enjoyable. Thankfully, it has none of the somewhat cloying sentimentality of her earlier works, perhaps best typified by Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse.
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Physical description

128 p.

ISBN

0140306900 / 9780140306903

Local notes

Susie Dixon, willful and self-involved, is determined to go away to holiday-camp, She finds herself at Castle Merlin, close to Hadrian's Wall. Here she has a series of extraordinary encounters with Dame Alys, a medieval lady - famed for her merlin hawking and for the rare "Book of Merlins" that she authored - in whose honor Castle Merlin was named. As Susie struggles to understand her odd experiences, and to relate to her fellow-camper, Bryan, she gradually gains a new awareness and empathy for those around her.
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