Customer Reviews

Macmurtrey's Wall

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

 

 

The pictures were wonderful - each one like having a fine piece of Art. The central character's endless pursuit of greatness and final realization that friendship and community is a far greater accomplishmnet than outrageous (and harmful) showings of physical strength could be easily translated to today. I loved the that the book has an ancient fable-like feel but was produced and created by a 21st century author.
Very high quality and meaningful book. I highly recommend.

The story is engaging, with a very sensible moral attached to it. It is the perfect book for young readers or children who are starting to learn to read. The pictures are captivating and the work that went into them were obviously a labor of love.

I personally know two little readers who love this author very much.

Marc Sutherland's Macmurtrey's Wall is a superbly presented picturebook of a giant named MacMurtrey, who was stronger and braver than every other living thing. Believe that conquering everyone was the path to happiness, MacMurtrey challenged the one force that defied him: the sea. He set to cage the sea itself with a wall - but his plan held great hidden peril, and the true path to happiness is not always what it appears to be. An engaging story with a soft-spoken moral, Macmurtney's Wall is very highly recommended for elementary school and community library collections.

Beautifully rendered drawings. The story is a great fable about the importance of community and the follies of egomania. A really unique book. A rare find. Also, the changing of the seasons and the old masters feel to the paintings gives it a timeless feel.

Many reviews I had read before mentioned that this book helped to demonstrate community values for children. I found that this wasn't really the case. Certainly Macmurtrey drove the rest of his community away with some of his practices, but they only came back by accident. The values will be quite difficult for younger children to see - after all they themselves are unlikely to try and build things like Macmurtrey did.
The book was quite difficult to find, although I don't regret buying it and it arrived in very good condition.

A visually rich picture book with its own symbology-whether a child is aware of it or not. I noticed a year passed in the images from the seasonal changes in the paintings. I noticed lots of Celtic references, ravens that forebode doom and some mysterious apple that appears in every image-all Tolkien-ish if at times grim.

The story is deceptively simple with a moral that seems to be aimed at adult readers just as much as their kids.

A child should keep this book into adulthood.