Customer Reviews

Falcon's Egg (Yearling Book)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great story about a girl who finds an egg in Central Park and takes it to a friend's house and keeps it hoping it will hatch. When it does hatch it turns out to be a DRAGON!!! She wants to keep the dragon but it turns out to be very difficult to keep a pet dragon. I am 9 years old and my brother is 11 and we both liked the book a lot.

Well-written fantasy books work on several different levels. You have your fantastical elements on the one hand and your down-to-earth heartfelt story on the other. Your fantasy must be rooted in basic human problems that we all deal with (or at least can sympathize towards). In "Falcon's Egg" the fantastical elements are firmly in place. Magic heated eggs? Check. Mythological creature from another time and place? Check. The basic human groundings are there too. Impossible matriarch figure? Check. Kid who doesn't have any friends in school? Check. So you'd think that the simple addition of one element to another would yield the ideal story. It doesn't quite work that way. Sure, "Falcon's Egg" is a fine telling of a magical tale. It's all well and good for what it is. But there's something lacking in this tale. Though a nicely written book with plummy plotting and choice characters, it is merely good. It is not exemplary.

Falcon's life is not ideal. Living with her immature and irresponsible mother and taking care of her baby brother almost on her own, she has to navigate daily through an existence of the usual kid woes. Falcon's parents divorced years ago and since then she's not seen much of her father. She has a fairly strong base of family friends, of course. There's Ardene, an adult who lives upstairs and is always happy to have Falcon over for tea. And there's Aunt Emily who has lived for an incredibly long time but is still close to her eleven-year-old great-niece. But when Falcon finds hot red egg nestled in the long grasses of Central Park, she knows she's on to something big. Soon the egg becomes a large part of Falcon's life. She tells her friends about it and soon everyone watches entranced as the scarlet sphere reveals a small equally scarlet dragon. Falcon grows deeply attached to her little ward, but a time soon comes when she must accept that Egg (as she has christened the beast) must live its own life someday.

I was initially a little shocked at the incompetence of Falcon's mother at the start. A flighty children's book illustrator, she rivals only Saffy's mum in, "Saffy's Angel" for most-negligent-but-idly-interested-mother-in-a-work-of-fiction award. Missy (as Falcon calls her) is prone to completely ignoring her children when she gets paid work, constantly giving them money to purchase take-out food and letting them wander hither and thither through dark dangerous New York. Falcon, fortunately, is a capable human being but prone to utter self-hatred when she forgets to watch her little brother for even a second. Missy feels no such guilt. She's a kind of adolescent herself who takes a lot more interest in playing dress up with her children than asking Falcon how she feels or how her day went at school. There's not much of a resolution to this storyline by the end of the book either. This struck me as honest, but odd.

As for the character of Falcon herself, she's fine. A loner who isn't particularly good at making friends with people her own age, Falcon (understandably) creates an unhealthy bond with her little Egg. It's only when the dragon makes it perfectly clear that it is not a pet or a dear companion that Falcon is able to let go of her discovery. Falcon is most sympathetic when she's dealing with her simpering mother. She's less likable when she starts making unreasonable dragon-related demands. But this is a believable reaction on her own part. And through it all you feel sorry for her. You feel sorry for the choices she's had to make. And you fell kind of bad that not much has been resolved by the end of the book. I would have thought author Luli Gray would have given us some kind of awakening or understanding at the story's close. No such understanding is forthcoming.

Just the same, for any kid who has ever dreamed of someday finding something extraordinary in an ordinary place, this book's perfect. In plot it bears some passing resemblance to the now remarkably popular, "Eragon" by Christopher Paolini, but is meant for a younger reading group. For pure wish-fulfillment, "Falcon's Egg" delivers. It's not the most satisfying fantasy out there for kids, but it's definitely interesting enough and well-written enough to garner a fair amount of attention. Recommended with slight reservations.

I really didn't like the book that much because. For one it went slow the writer didnt give a good discription because I couldint really see the character in my head. Some of the chapters were really long it didn't give any breaks at all. So next time im not going to pick a book called the Falcons Egg.
The worst part in the book was in the biggining. They didn't discribe any really good details of where they were at I didn't know if they were outside. Or inside. The only time I really knew they were outside is when they were talking about were they got the egg. That's the only time I knew through most of the book.
The thing the author did really good was when they were discribing the setting. Just this once, It was in the forest. They were tring to the egg back to the mother. And the conflict, the writer did a pretty good job on that. It was funny when they were fighting. About people that wanted to keep the egg and the other people that wanted to give it back so it wouldn't die.

This book is about a girl named Falcon who finds an egg in Central Park. She brings it to her neighbour, Arlene Taylor, who takes care of the egg. Falcon's Aunt Emily finnds out soon enough and tells her friend, an ornithologist, to find out what is inside.They form a secret society, "The Friends of Egg." When the egg hatches, the creature inside is a dragon! Is it hard to keep a dragon without your mother discovering it?
Read "Falcon's Egg" to find out!

Falcons Egg was great.It was a fantastic book. Even though it was easy. the book took place in England.Ive always liked England personally. I reccomend this book to you because this book is a adventure story. And I think other kids should read this book too.