| The Magician's Boy |
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| illustrated by Serena Riglietti |
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| The Boy who operates the puppets for the Magician’s famous puppet show discovers he has lost the St. George puppet in the middle of a performance. With a single gesture, the furious Magician sends the boy into the Land of Story to find it. The Boy’s quest leads him through the quirky landscape of nursery rhyme and pantomime to fight the dragon and find St George. |
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| FROM THE AUTHOR |
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| “The Magician’s Boy is a book made from a play. I wrote it for the 1988 Revels using the framework of a Revels staple: one of the old Mummers Plays of Europe in which villagers used to act out the ritual death and rebirth of a hero who stood for the cycle of human life. The Boy who is its hero finds he shares the fate of the ritual hero, St. George. I’ll never forget the moment in the theatre when a thousand people breathed ‘“Oh!’ as they realized, like the Boy, that the hero he was seeking was himself.” |
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| AWARDS AND HONORS |
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CCBC Choices (Cooperative Children's Book Center)
Bank Street Best Books of the Year
Kansas State Reading Circle Intermediate Titles
Parents' Choice Award
SSLI Book Award Honor Book
Texas Bluebonnet Master List
Massachusetts Children's Book Award Master List |
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| PRAISE FOR THE MAGICIAN'S BOY |
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| Simple vocabulary and ebullient illustrations relate how the compassionate boy aids fairy-tale characters in distress, faces the fabled beast, and quietly takes on the role of hero. |
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— Library School Journal |
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| ADAPTATIONS |
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Arthur Yorinks’ Night Kitchen Radio Theater presented Susan Cooper’s adaptation of The Magician’s Boy in 2006. It was recorded live at the Kennedy Center for broadcast on XM Satellite Radio’s Kids Channel—watch the performance here. |
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