Griffin's Castle
by Jenny Nimmo
On This Page
Description
After years of having moved around, eleven-year-old Dinah determines to make a huge, dilapidated old mansion into a home for her mother and herself, but the wild beasts she summons from a stone wall to protect her may also imprison her.Tags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
This is a strange book that put me in mind of Pauline Fisk's award winning "Midnight Blue". Dinah is a bright young girl with a challenging childhood. Her mother has a new boyfriend with a dilapidated house in Cardiff that they move into. But the relationship between Dinah and the boyfriend - Gomer - is a poor one, with no love lost on either side.
Somehow Dinah manages to unleash forces relating to the stone images at the nearby castle. The ensuing story is somewhat disturbing - and the question is whether she will be able to control the forces she has unleashed. Will her school friends be able to help?
This is an interesting, and somewhat strange book. Worth reading though.
Somehow Dinah manages to unleash forces relating to the stone images at the nearby castle. The ensuing story is somewhat disturbing - and the question is whether she will be able to control the forces she has unleashed. Will her school friends be able to help?
This is an interesting, and somewhat strange book. Worth reading though.
Eleven-year old Dinah isn't very hopeful about her feckless mother's newest venture; moving them into an abandoned and condemned old house at the behest of her newest boyfriend, Gomer. However, she slowly becomes invested in the vast, ancient house, especially when she discovers the animals along the wall come to life and protect her.
Or are they holding her prisoner? As the year wanes and Christmas approaches, Dinah sinks deeper and deeper into her fantasy world, trying to create the happy family she desperately wants but deep inside knows is impossible. In the end, not even her new friends can save her; only Dinah's determination and spirit give her a chance to break away from the past and find a family for herself.
I always feel that show more Nimmo's work is somehow under-plotted - like there is a whole extra storyline I'm missing out on. However, her books are nonetheless enjoyable for all that. This is pure neglected-child-wish-fulfillment fantasy. Be sure to pull out the tissues as Dinah desperately tries to create a Christmas for a family that exists only in her imagination. There's just enough magic to add the spooky touch that Nimmo's work always has, and, of course, bits of history and Welsh culture sprinkled throughout as well. The ending is satisfying, if a little abrupt.
Verdict: This is out of print and, honestly, it's not so amazing that I'd take the trouble to track it down, but if you already have a copy in your library or run across one in a donation pile, be sure to recommend it to kids looking for a tear-jerker, holiday fantasy with a happy ending.
ISBN: 9780439025546; Published 2007 by Orchard/Scholastic; I think I bought it at Half-Price Books? Donated to the library show less
Or are they holding her prisoner? As the year wanes and Christmas approaches, Dinah sinks deeper and deeper into her fantasy world, trying to create the happy family she desperately wants but deep inside knows is impossible. In the end, not even her new friends can save her; only Dinah's determination and spirit give her a chance to break away from the past and find a family for herself.
I always feel that show more Nimmo's work is somehow under-plotted - like there is a whole extra storyline I'm missing out on. However, her books are nonetheless enjoyable for all that. This is pure neglected-child-wish-fulfillment fantasy. Be sure to pull out the tissues as Dinah desperately tries to create a Christmas for a family that exists only in her imagination. There's just enough magic to add the spooky touch that Nimmo's work always has, and, of course, bits of history and Welsh culture sprinkled throughout as well. The ending is satisfying, if a little abrupt.
Verdict: This is out of print and, honestly, it's not so amazing that I'd take the trouble to track it down, but if you already have a copy in your library or run across one in a donation pile, be sure to recommend it to kids looking for a tear-jerker, holiday fantasy with a happy ending.
ISBN: 9780439025546; Published 2007 by Orchard/Scholastic; I think I bought it at Half-Price Books? Donated to the library show less
Nimmo's new book is a stand-alone, not a series like her well-known Charlie Bone books or her Magician trilogy. I grabbed this book from our school librarian before she even got it catalogues. I really like the Charlie Bone books, even if it took the second book before I really got into them--they are a good, original children's fantasy series. With the Magician books and this one, Nimmo moves even further into Welsh mythology, reminding me a lot in tone of Alan Garner's books. This story eerily evokes the mindset of a very bright girl who has never belonged, never had a home of her own, and her imagination brings to life stone animals from a wall near a Welsh castle. Recommended.
An interesting premise -- a girl and her mother move into a old house near a wall decorated with stone animals, and the girl's feelings bring the animals to life. Initially the animals seem to be protecting her, but by the end, in a nice twist, she realizes they are actually imprisoning her. The writing, though, was a little frustrating, and it was hard to figure out what the characters were really experiencing. Perhaps the language was not concrete enough? The book was also slow to start, and the protagonist was not very sympathetic. I think I remember feeling a bit of the same frustration with her "Snow Spider."
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
92+ Works 23,629 Members
Born in Windsor, England in 1944, Nimmo's father died when she was only five. By the time she was fourteen, she had gone to two boarding schools and had joined a theater company in England. Her unstable childhood led to a series of diverse jobs where she worked in several fields as a nanny, a photographic researcher, and a floor manager at the show more BBC. At the BBC she became a director of Jackanory, a children's show. After having her first child, Nimmo left the BBC and began work on her first novel, "The Bronze Trumpeteer." Nimmo is best known for two series of fantasy novels: The Magician Trilogy (1986 to 1989), contemporary stories rooted in Welsh myth, and Children of the Red King (2002 to 2010), featuring Charlie Bone and other magically endowed school children. The Snow Spider, first of the Magician books, won the second annual Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the 1987 Tir na n-Og Award as the year's best original-English-language book with "authentic Welsh background". The Stone Mouse was highly commended for the 1993 Carnegie Medal. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1994
- People/Characters
- Dinah
- Epigraph
- Animals do not sleep. At night
They stand over the World like a stone wall.
--The Face of a Horse
Nicolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky
Translated from the Russian by Daniel Weissbort - Dedication
- This book is dedicated to the memory of the late Ray Smith.
- First words
- A tall house loomed before Dinah. She stood at the gate, trying to make out what it really looked like, but its features were blurred in the gloom. So she had to rely on her imagination and saw narrow lancet windows and the g... (show all)reat oak door of a castle.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Do you want to ask them in?"
She smiled and shook her head. "They don't really want to come in," she told him. "They just needed to know that I was safe. I'll send them a card from Snowdonia, shall I? A picture of our mountain."
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 284
- Popularity
- 112,052
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.46)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 3
