Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	Water:Tales of Elemental Spirits
	Author:	McKinley, Robin & Dickinson, Peter
	Date Published:	2002
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	6 - 12
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Notes:
Short Stories

Booktalk:
"Merlin," I called, up on Tumber hill pointing at the sky's peak, "Look at that cloud. It's a silver sword. The sword of a giant king." "Once," said Merlin, "there was a king with your name." "Was there?" "And he will be." "What do you mean? He can't live in two times." "How do you know?" Merlin asked Then, one of the dogs pranced up to me with a rock in his mouth and began a tug-of-war. When I let go and looked round again, Merlin wasn't there...or anywhere. There was nowhere for him to go...where I couldn't see him, but he was nowhere in sight. Merlin is strange and I sometimes wonder whether he knows some magic. It was some time later, on Tumber hill while good King Richard lay dying, that Merlin gave me my seeing stone. Four-cornered, one face a lump covered with little white spots and patches, the other side smooth and glossy. "A mirror," I said. "Not really." "What is it?" "A gift." "I mean, what is it for?" He shrugged. "What kind of stone is it?" "It is made of ice and fire. Its name is obsidian. It's time for you to have it. It's time for me to let it go." "What is it for?" "That depends on you. Only you can tell. . . . From this morning on Tumber Hill, until the day you die, you will never own anything as precious as this." "No one must know you own it...or see it...or learn anything about it." "You must keep the stone to yourself until you discover its power." King Richard was dead, and King John began his rule of taxation and suppression before the stone began to show me things. Sometimes it was still and quiet, but sometimes it began to tell a story...about a king, named Uther, and a hooded stranger who magically helped him kill the husband of the woman the king wanted for his queen. It told of the agreement between them that would give their firstborn son to the hooded man in exchange for his help. Of how the son would be raised as the stranger saw fit and be ready to become king when it became his time. The son had the same name as me...perhaps, he was to become the king who had my name? He was fostered by a knight named Ector and he had an older brother named Kay. Occasionally, the things that happened in the stone mirrored my life here. But, not always, and not exactly the same. I have an older brother too, but his name is Serle. And Serle hates me, unlike Kay, who loved his foster brother, Arthur. I had three other brothers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, but they all died of disease. Luke was the last and youngest of us. We put his body in the ground, and I wrote the words for his gravestone. But, when they came back from being engraved, it said he was the fourth son of John, our father. It should have said the fifth...unless, like the Arthur in the stone, I am also a fosterling... And the hooded man finally revealed his face...the face of Merlin.