A year ago, thirteen-year-old David Eliot would have given anything to see the end of Groosham Grange and its ghastly teachers. Now he?s on track to win the Unholy Grail, a cup of magical power rewarded to the star student. But a series of suspicious mishaps is closing the gap between David and the new boy, Vincent. It seems as though someone?or some thing?doesn?t want David to win the cup and may even be threatening Groosham Grange?s very existence!
Return to Groosham Grange: The Unholy Grail
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8-This 1991 title by Anthony Horowitz (issued in paperback 1999) has some similarities to Harry Potter, and Harry devotees will likely be its audience. It, too, is set in a school of witchcraft and magic, although Groosham Grange is less fully realized, peopled with caricature vampires, witches, a two-headed headmaster, and so on. Nickolas Grace reads the story with a most accomplished and sophisticated British style. He provides a vast array of voices and accents to fulfill each character, but a Haitian voodoo specialist who sounds like a stereotypical Igor the Frankenstein lab assistant is rather over the top. As for the story, David Eliot fully expects to win the coveted end-of-term prize for the highest marks: the Unholy Grail. But a disliked challenger and some very strange coincidences cost him the prize. In the course of watching David work out what has happened and why, listeners encounter his bizarre and unlikable family who also have a role to play in the near-destruction of the school as part of an evil plot. Although this tale is more gruesome (the pun in the name is well-deserved) but less interesting than Harry's fans will be used to, the story may appeal to some middle school students with a taste for the macabre. Librarians filling in "what can I read next?" collections could consider this, but it disappoints in its stock characters, pat ending, and lack of depth or true interest.
Jane P. Fenn, Corning-Painted Post West High School, NY
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
Jane P. Fenn, Corning-Painted Post West High School, NY
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
Review
"A first-class children's novelist." The Times Educational Supplement; "Horowitz has become a writer who converts boys to reading." The Times; "As entertaining and suspenseful as the first book." The School Librarian; "Anarchy, entertainment and magic... Anthony Horowitz continues to write with huge appeal." Literacy and Learning
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Anthony Horowitz's life might have been copied from the pages of Charles Dickens or the Brothers Grimm. Born in 1956 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a family of wealth and status, Anthony was raised by nannies, surrounded by servants and chauffeurs. His father, a wealthy businessman, was, says Mr. Horowitz, "a fixer for Harold Wilson." What that means exactly is unclear -- "My father was a very secretive man," he says-- so an aura of suspicion and mystery surrounds both the word and the man. As unlikely as it might seem, Anthony's father, threatened with bankruptcy, withdrew all of his money from Swiss bank accounts in Zurich and deposited it in another account under a false name and then promptly died. His mother searched unsuccessfully for years in attempt to find the money, but it was never found. That too shaped Anthony's view of things. Today he says, "I think the only thing to do with money is spend it." His mother, whom he adored, eccentrically gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. His grandmother, another Dickensian character, was mean-spirited and malevolent, a destructive force in his life. She was, he says, "a truly evil person", his first and worst arch villain. "My sister and I danced on her grave when she died," he now recalls.
A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands&. I was an astoundingly large, round child&." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution.
Anthony Horowitz is perhaps the busiest writer in England. He has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. He writes in a comfortable shed in his garden for up to ten hours per day. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he has also written episodes of several popular TV crime series, including Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. He has written a television series Foyle's War, which recently aired in the United States, and he has written the libretto of a Broadway musical adapted from Dr. Seuss's book, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. His film script The Gathering has just finished production. And&oh yes&there are more Alex Rider novels in the works. Anthony has also written the Diamond Brothers series.
A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands&. I was an astoundingly large, round child&." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution.
Anthony Horowitz is perhaps the busiest writer in England. He has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. He writes in a comfortable shed in his garden for up to ten hours per day. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he has also written episodes of several popular TV crime series, including Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. He has written a television series Foyle's War, which recently aired in the United States, and he has written the libretto of a Broadway musical adapted from Dr. Seuss's book, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. His film script The Gathering has just finished production. And&oh yes&there are more Alex Rider novels in the works. Anthony has also written the Diamond Brothers series.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is the Exact Same Book as The Unholy Grail,
By
This review is from: Return to Groosham Grange (Paperback)
I work at various branches of Gold Coast City Council Libraries and many people request titles of books not realising they've read them before. Before Harry went to Hogwarts, David went to Groosham Grange! With the resurgence of this genre through J.K Rowling's Harry Potter series many people have been trying to obtain and reread the sensational Groosham Grange novels which they read as a kid. Many people are ecstatic when they see what they believe to be a new third title in the series called Return to Groosham Grange and immediately want to order it. The problem is a lot also are ordering it at the same time they are ordering The Unholy Grail and being disappointed when they find out this and that book are exactly the same story. The Unholy Grail was the original title of this sequel to Groosham Grange and for some reason publishers have relaunched it with the title Return to Groosham Grange. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they're doing this to try to attract the attention of buyers who have only read the first novel and did not know there was a sequel and not to simply mislead consumers.
Anyway if you haven't already done so make sure you purchase the original and read it before opening the first page of this one. This book does give away what happened in the first, the first is a lot more enjoyable when you don't know who's still going to be at Groosham for the sequel. So if you haven't read that it would probably be a good idea not to continue reading this review as although I obviously wouldn't give away anything major from the plot of this book just outlining what this novel is about does give away the ending of the original adventure. For those readers I will just say buy the Groosham Grange books, they're sensational! In The Unholy Grail/Return to Groosham Grange David has settled into Groosham Grange and has become the school's number one student. However a new boy named Vincent has come to the school and he's quickly stealing David's thunder, and Jill's admiration. David had the school's top prize The Unholy Grail all wrapped up until Vincent enrolled. Now the grail is up for grabs by either boy. David's dislike for Vincent is costing him dearly, Vincent seems to know what buttons to push to get David in trouble and punished through resulting in the loss of ranking points. Soon David is framed in The Heads Office for a crime he believes Vincent committed. David is also learning it is very important that he wins The Unholy Grail, as if he does not Groosham Grange will cease to exist all together. This adventure will also take David to the British Museum and the reader will get to meet Adolf Hitler and a heap of other wax dummys along the way. So that they sell more copies publishers often change titles. Others novels include P.J Tracy's Want to Play, which is the same book as Monkeerench. Bill Fitzhugh's McJesus, which is the same novel as both Cross Dressing or Cross + Dress. Bush Falls is exactly the same novel as Jonathan Tropper's The Book of Joe. Buy the Unholy Grail/Return to Groosham Grange under either title, I'd get the one that's cheapest!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This Book Has Been Rereleased With the New Title - Return to Groosham Grange,
By
This review is from: Unholy Grail (Paperback)
I work at various branches of Gold Coast City Council Libraries and many people request titles of books not realising they've read them before. Before Harry went to Hogwarts, David went to Groosham Grange! Many people have been trying to obtain and reread the sensational Groosham Grange novels which they read as a kid. Many are ecstatic to discover what they believe to be a new third novel in this series called Return to Groosham Grange and immediately want to order it. The problem is it is the exact same titile as The Unholy Grail. The Unholy Grail was the original title of this sequel to Groosham Grange and for some reason publishers have relaunched it with the title Return to Groosham Grange. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they're doing this to try to attract the attention of buyers who have only read the first novel and did not know there was a sequel and not to simply mislead consumers.
Anyway if you haven't already done so make sure you purchase the original and read it before opening the first page of this one. This book does give away what happened in the first, the first is a lot more enjoyable when you don't know who's still going to be at Groosham for the sequel. So if you haven't read that it would probably be a good idea not to continue reading this review as although I obviously wouldn't give away anything major from the plot of this book just outlining what this novel is about does give away the ending of the original adventure. For those readers I will just say buy the Groosham Grange books, they're sensational! In The Unholy Grail/Return to Groosham Grange David has settled into Groosham Grange and has become the school's number one student. However a new boy named Vincent has come to the school and he's quickly stealing David's thunder, and Jill's admiration. David had the school's top prize The Unholy Grail all wrapped up until Vincent enrolled. Now the grail is up for grabs by either boy. David's dislike for Vincent is costing him dearly, Vincent seems to know what buttons to push to get David in trouble and punished through resulting in the loss of ranking points. Soon David is framed in The Heads Office for a crime he believes Vincent committed. David is also learning it is very important that he wins The Unholy Grail, as if he does not Groosham Grange will cease to exist all together. This adventure will also take David to the British Museum and the reader will get to meet Adolf Hitler and a heap of other wax dummys along the way. So that they sell more copies publishers often change titles. Others novels include P.J Tracy's Want to Play, which is the same book as Monkeerench. Bill Fitzhugh's McJesus, which is the same novel as both Cross Dressing or Cross + Dress. Bush Falls is exactly the same novel as Jonathan Tropper's The Book of Joe. Buy the Unholy Grail/Return to Groosham Grange under either title, I'd get the one that's cheapest!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Funny Sequel to Groosham Grange,
By Sir Furboy (Aberystwyth, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Return to Groosham Grange: The Unholy Grail (Paperback)
Anthony Horowitz is an accomplished and versatile writer who writes perfect books for older children and the young adult age group. Return to Groosham Grange is typical of his work, if a little bit more off beat than usual. This hilarious adventure is the sequel to Groosham Grange, and follows David - now enjoying his life as a student at the extremely unorthodox school, and battling to win the school's highest (and only) honour, presented to the most outstanding student - the Unholy Grail. But all is not well, as the school has been infiltrated by someone who wants to destroy it. Children aged about 8 or 9+ will love this story. At times it is so wacky that it might be a bit too much for teenage readers, but it is still good fun, with a fast and enjoyable plot. My one reservation - and the reason I will not be lending it out - is that it basically inverts ideas of good and evil. Witches and vampires and werewolves are not exactly evil, but the Christians certainly intend it. That is not to say I think children should not read this book. In some senses it is a perfect book to challenge our ideas of what is good and what evil means. But I think it is a book that perhaps requires a bit of discussion to round it off, as it is aimed at an age that is used to more didactic learning, and it would be a shame if the actual message that sinks home is that Witches are good and Christians are evil.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
