Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen was written in 1596 for Queen Elizabeth 1st. Award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean re-tells this famous romantic text in a gripping and accessible way. She introduces a whole new generation of readers to Spenser's exciting adventures of knights and dragons, sorcerers and hermits, princesses and sea nymphs.Lavishly designed and brilliantly illustrated by Jason Cockcroft, this is a perfect and a wonderful present.
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Lavishly illustrated by Jason Cockcroft, this classy retelling by Geraldine McCaughrean... will win new fans... -- The Sunday Times 20041128 " A beautiful book... both action packed and romantic. Ideal for reading aloud and sharing with a wide age group the story is lyrically retold capturing all the passion and excitement of the original." -- Julia Eccleshare, Lovereading4kids.co.uk 20041128 From an award-winning author comes a wonderful retelling of Edmund Spenser's literary masterpiece The Faerie Queen, with stunning colour illustrations throughout by Jason Cockcroft. Accessible to children and appealing to the adult reader this is a book to delve into again and again. In the land of the Faerie Queen, and with the help of this book, there's always time for stories. -- My books mag 20041128 'a substantial literary feat' -- Cork Evening Echo 20041128 skilful retelling...memorable pictures... There's something here to enthrall all young readers. -- Carousel, Oct 2006 20041128
About the Author
Geraldine McCaughrean is an established author for all age groups. Geraldine has been awarded many prizes for her writing, including the Whitbread Children's Book Award for A Little Lower than the Angels, the Library Association Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for a Pack of Lies. Geraldine has also published a number of retellings of traditional stories. She was awarded the Blue Peter Book Award for her retelling of 'A Pilgrim's Progress'. Geraldine lives in Berkshire and has a young daughter.
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More About the Author
It's 30 years now since I first got published, and 50 since I found out how writing let me step outside my little, everyday world and go wherever I chose - way back in Time, to far distant shores, towards my own, home-made happy ending. Not that all my books are an easy ride. I write adventure, first and foremost, because that's what I enjoyed reading as a child. But since I have published over 150 books now, there are all manner of books in among that number - gorgeously illustated picture books, easy readers, prize winners, teenage books and five adult novels.
The White Darkness won the Printz Award in the USA, which, for as Englishwoman, was the most amazing, startling thrill.
Then there was Peter Pan in Scarlet - official sequel to J M Barrie's Peter Pan, written on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hopsital for Sick Children. I won the chance to write that in a worldwide competition, and because Peter Pan is loved everywhere, my book sold worldwide too. I can't say I expected that when, as a child, I dreamed of being like my older brother and getting a book published one day.
These days I have a husband (who's good at continuity and spelling) and a daughter who is an excellent editor. But she's at the Royal Academy of Dramtic Art now, studying to become an actor. So, naturally, I have turned my hand to writing plays. (So many actors, so few plays!)
My Mum told me, "Never boil your cabbages twice, dear," which was her way of saying, "Don't repeat yourself." So I have tried never to write the same book twice. You'll find all my novels quite different from one another. I have also done lots of retellings of myth, legend, folk and fairy tales, and adapted indigestible classics such as El Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Shakespeare and the Pilgrim's Progress.
Something for everyone, you see, my dear young, not-so-young, eccentric, middle-of-the-road, poetical, sad, cheerful, timid or reckless reader.
All they have in common is that they all contain words. If you are allergic to words, you'd best not open the covers.
The White Darkness won the Printz Award in the USA, which, for as Englishwoman, was the most amazing, startling thrill.
Then there was Peter Pan in Scarlet - official sequel to J M Barrie's Peter Pan, written on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hopsital for Sick Children. I won the chance to write that in a worldwide competition, and because Peter Pan is loved everywhere, my book sold worldwide too. I can't say I expected that when, as a child, I dreamed of being like my older brother and getting a book published one day.
These days I have a husband (who's good at continuity and spelling) and a daughter who is an excellent editor. But she's at the Royal Academy of Dramtic Art now, studying to become an actor. So, naturally, I have turned my hand to writing plays. (So many actors, so few plays!)
My Mum told me, "Never boil your cabbages twice, dear," which was her way of saying, "Don't repeat yourself." So I have tried never to write the same book twice. You'll find all my novels quite different from one another. I have also done lots of retellings of myth, legend, folk and fairy tales, and adapted indigestible classics such as El Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Shakespeare and the Pilgrim's Progress.
Something for everyone, you see, my dear young, not-so-young, eccentric, middle-of-the-road, poetical, sad, cheerful, timid or reckless reader.
All they have in common is that they all contain words. If you are allergic to words, you'd best not open the covers.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fun, fetching, freely-handled adaptation for middle-schoolers,
By Jabba (From the Land of Sky Blue Waters) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen (Paperback)
Award-winning author-artist team Geraldine McCaughrean and Jason Cockcroft have joined forces again to create an infectious, inviting, colorfully-illustrated, novella-length adaptation of Edmund Spenser's epic-scale sixteenth-century poem of knightly adventure and enchantment, "The Faerie Queene." While more than one complete or partial children's rendering of Spenser's First Book has been done in recent decades ("Saint George and the Dragon," first by Sandol Stoddard Warburg and Pauline Baynes and later by Margaret Hodges and Trina Schart Hyman), this must be the first time in about a century that a complete adaptation of the poem as a whole has appeared (there were many of them in the decades before that, most notably Mary Macleod's recently-reprinted 1897 effort, "Stories from The Faerie Queene"). Unlike most of her predecessors, McCaughrean has handled the adaptation very freely and inventively, as if penning the scenario for a TV miniseries based on Spenser's tales of chivalry, rather than merely simplifying the complexity and maturity of the original down to a level accessible and suitable for today's young readers. Sometimes we are really no closer to Spenser's version of events than in the title story from "The Mathematics of Magic," a light-hearted fantasy by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp in which modern-day psychologists transport themselves into the midst of Spenser's Book Four by means of Symbolic Logic! While I think that this freedom was the right choice, I do fear that, when those of today's young readers who are especially taken by this book eventually sign up for college courses on Spenser's original, they will be disappointed at how many signature details and scenes of which they have particularly fond memories were invented by McCaughrean and are not to be found in Spenser at all. Nonetheless, I suspect that the touches McCaughrean has added to this book will indeed instill lasting and affectionate memories in many of its young readers, and leave them with at least an indirect acquaintance with an exquisite and extremely influential masterpiece of English literature. The Faerie Queene (Penguin Classics)Saint George and the DragonSaint George and the DragonThe Mathematics of Magic (L. Sprague De Camp) (L. Sprague De Camp)Stories from the Faerie Queene (Forgotten Books)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Gem for any age fan of Arthurian tales !,
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This review is from: Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen (Paperback)
I found this while looking for a modern retelling of Pilgrim's Progress. Our family has long enjoyed morality Tales of the King Arthur era, and these were a delight to find. this is the sort of thing that you read out loud to your sons & daughters but secretly enjoy yourself. The stories are rich in encouragement to find what is truely important in life. The illustrations scattered throughout might give the under 5 yr old set nightmares. Some pictures are ink drawings, some are full color. If you enjoyed Gerald Morris's Squire Tales series, you will enjoy these..(though these do not have an underlying thread of humor running through them) the style is similar.
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