Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Young Merlin Trilogy: Passager, Hobby, Merlin
	Author:	Yolen, Jane
	Date Published:	1996, 1997
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	6 - 7
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Notes:
Booktalk is from Passager, 1997.

Booktalk:
When I was just a lad of eight, I was abandoned in the wilderness in Britain, as were many others. For a year, I survived by my own devices, a wild child who lost the gift of speech. I ate mostly nuts and berries, ran and climbed trees to keep away from the wild dog packs, slept in the crook of trees to protect myself from predators, and was soon bereft of clothing. I became a wild thing, a woodwose, marking my territory, as did the other animals in the wilderness. Then, the falconer came. He spent a day and a night waiting for the falcon he was training to return to his arm. Eventually, his patience was rewarded, and he and the falcon disappeared into the underbrush. Intrigued, I followed, and so eventually came to his clearing in the woods. Like the Falcon, I was lured into his clutches, and kept under lock and key until my wildness began to disappear and I once again began to enter civilization…although in a very limited way. Slowly, the falconer helped me regain those things I had lost and welcomed me into his household. Then, he took me into the mews where his birds were kept and introduced me to them. The goshawk, the peregrine, and the third bird, the passager, caught wild and not yet mature. It was when he named the passager that it came to me. It was then that my legacy and my destiny began to be shaped, for the passager bore my true name...Merlin.