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Booktalking Colorado Full Record:
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Title: |
Once Upon a Marigold |
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Author: |
Ferris, Jean |
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Date Published: |
2002 |
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Genre: |
Fantasy |
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Grade Level: |
6 - 8 |
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Booktalker: |
Susan Bartel |
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Awards: |
Former Blue Spruce Award Nominee |
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Booktalk:
My dad is a troll. Well, he’s not my real dad, but he found me hiding in the forest when I was just a little guy. I’d run away from home. I knew my name was Christian, but all I knew about my parents was that their names were Father and Mother, and Ed couldn’t figure out how to return me to my real home without getting himself into a lot of trouble. So he took me in, got to liking me, and raised me in his cave in the forest, along with the dogs, Bub and Cate. Ed’s big passion in life is trying to convince the members of the LEFT Association (LEFT stands for Leprechauns, Elves, Fairies, and Trolls) that Queen Mab’s tooth fairy monopoly should be broken up. Queen Mab is just unbelievably bad at reading maps, is forgetful and overworked.
We live in King Swithbert’s kingdom. He’s a decent sort. Mostly concerned with keeping folks in his kingdom happy. The one person in his kingdom who’s the most difficult to please is his wife, Queen Olympia. She’s a control freak, wanting to increase her power by marrying her 4 princesses to the right princes, in order to expand her sphere of influence. The three blond triplets were easily married to the right guys. This only left Queen Olympia with the troubling problem of Princess Marigold. For one thing, a fairy had given as a birth-gift to Marigold the gift of sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of others. The birth fairy overdid it, however, so that Marigold can actually know the thoughts of others just by touching them. So the gift turned out to be a curse because very few people wanted to touch Marigold. Certainly her mother never touched her. And this meant very few eligible suitors could be found for Marigold.
How do I know all this? Well, I’ve been watching! I’m an inventor of sorts. I’ve invented an elevator which delivers water to the cave from the river, and boomerang arrows (kind of handy when you miss your target), rutabaga parfaits (that one didn’t go over so well), a telescope, and p-mail. What’s p-mail, you ask? Well, pigeon-mail, of course. I’ve spent a lot of my time using my telescope to watch the castle which is across the river from our cave. I know all about King Swithbert, Queen Olympia, and the three triplets. But most of all, I watch Marigold. I feel like I know Marigold. I see that no one but King Swithbert ever touches her. I feel that she’s lonely and unhappy. And I want to get her know better.
So I devised a little canister that fits on Walter the pigeon’s leg, and I trained Walter to fly to a destination, wait for a reply and fly home again. Now Marigold and I have been communicating via p-mail. We both love Greek myths, we trade bad jokes, and I hear all about her attempts to foil Queen Olympia’s attempts to marry her to one horrible suitor after another. But this can’t go on forever. Soon Queen Olympia will succeed. She’s determined to have Marigold out of her way. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do, but it’s time for me to try.
With lots of mixed feelings and none of us knowing what to say or do, I leave Ed and the dogs, cross the river and take a job as a squire, working in the stables at the castle. Now I’m close to Marigold, King Swithbert, and Queen Olympia. And things are worse than I thought. Queen Olympia really is willing to do anything, even bump off her own family, to have her way.
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