Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Ropemaker
	Author:	Dickinson, Peter
	Date Published:	2001
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	7 - 12
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Booktalk:
There was no History in the Valley. No wars or reports of wars, no rulers. Nothing worth putting in a book. Not for eighteen generations had anything happened in the valley worth recording. No history, only time…and the story of Asarta. It was a story that told of a time before. A time when there was magic in the Valley. But a time when the valley was alternately plagued by the fierce horsemen from beyond the northern mountains who would lay waste to the valley, and the Empire in the south which exacted horrendous taxes on the valley to "protect" it from the ravages of the horsemen. The Empire would eventually turn its efforts elsewhere, and the horsemen would reappear, only to be once more driven away by the Empire which would exact taxes …or take what and/or whoever to makeup for whatever the people couldn't pay. Finally, a delegation of four men and four women had set out from the valley to find the magician Asarta who, so it was rumored, could protect them from both the Empire and the northern horsemen. In the end, only two of the eight persevered over the trials they encountered in the Empire. They found Asarta just before her final journey. She set them on another quest for the mage Faheel, her chosen successor who solved their problem…so long as one member of each generation from each family fulfilled a yearly mission to keep the spell intact. That was how, the story went, the glacier formed that made the northern mountains impassable, and how the forest was maintained which men could not enter without becoming sick to the point of death unless they quickly left it. Thus, the valley had been free from invasion on both fronts for 18 generations. It had also been free of magic except for the one member of each generation possessing the gift of fulfilling the yearly upkeep of the spell. But this year something had gone wrong. All indications were that the magic was failing. Another delegation must pass through the forest to the Empire to ask Faheel, purported to still be alive, to renew the protection. The delegation would leave via the river to try to minimize the effects of the forest 'curse' upon the men. Women must go with them to guide the raft through the river in case the men passed out from the effects of the forest. The blind Alnor, his grandson Tahl, and grandma Meena, all beneficiaries of their generation of the renewing magic were picked to undertake the trek. And Tilja, Meena's granddaughter, the older sister, the one without the magic, the one whose unique skills would be the most needed in the upcoming struggle.