Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Healer's Keep
	Author:	Hanley, Victoria
	Date Published:	2002
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	6 - 8
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh
	Awards:	Former Blue Spruce Award Nominee

Booktalk:
I had to run. There was no choice. Lord Morlen was evil!! Yes, slaves were commonly scared to mark them as such, but Evan was not Lord Morlen's to mark. He belonged to my master, and when Morlen grabbed Evan and sliced his face, I (Maeve) fled, crying for Orlo who interrupted the powerful lord at his task. In retaliation, Morlen had forced Lord Indol to sell both Evan and me to him. Luckily, I overheard the conversation and was able to remain out of their sight. When they left, I entered the room, forced open the chest where Lord Indol had placed our purchase price, appropriated it, and hurried to my mother, Lila. Lila refused to leave with me, saying that her life was nearly at an end and that she had only held back death to see me one more time. She had made me a dress fit for royalty from bits and pieces of scraps. A dress that I could wear once out of Lord Indol's estate in order to pass as a free person. My father, she told me (I never had known anything about my father), was a Dreamwen, one who could walk through dreams, visit other realms, aid the dying and heal the minds of the living. The lords had hunted them nearly to extinction in their quest for power, so the remaining Dreamwen had taken refuge among the lowborn free. Morlen, on the other hand, was an Ebrowen, one who could invade the dreams of anyone whose eyes they have looked into and learn everything the dreamer knows. Morlen had fallen into the ways of evil, and had looked into my eyes and Evan's. My only hope was a family treasure, the Dreamwen Stone that would protect the bearer of the stone from invasion by an Ebrowen. My father had left the stone for my mother who told me where and how to find it. We hugged goodbye one last time. Then, I gathered up my things, told Matron Jill that Morlen had sent me for Evan, and escaped from the estate with him. Now, all I had to do was retrieve the Dreamwen Stone, hope that it would protect Evan's dreams as well as my own all while traveling through a countryside that would be on the lookout for the two of us.