Carbonel (A Puffin Book)

Product Information

Carbonel and Calidor is more of a sequel to The Kingdom of Carbonel alone than to both earlier books.

The children are allowed to choose a present from a box of Miss Dibdin’s party crackers, and Rosemary picks an odd one that has a witch’s hat and a “Golden Gee-Gaw” (a magic ring) inside it.I like the way that libraries do that sometimes; they give you the things that you did not quite mean to get and yet knew you always wanted.

All turns out well, but Rosemary and John have to give up their ability to understand the speech of animals. Then they meet Dumpsie (whose real name is Wellingtonia), and learn that Mattins has betrayed Calidor to Queen Grisana and Princess Melissa, who plan to punish him severely with all the other Fallowhithe cats for the insult of Calidor’s rejecting the marriage. It is a great story to introduce children to the world of magic and adventure especially if they have a pet cat. Carbonel, King of the Fallowhithe cats, needs help to find his runaway son, Prince Calidor, and to rescue him from the snares of the wicked Broomhurst witches. The introduction of new characters, the new villain witch and her toad among others, kept the antics of Rosemary and John fresh and interesting -- possibly more enjoyable than the second book in the trilogy.As it is though, it remains a four star read for me, and the trilogy has remained a firm favourite with younger readers.

The plot is straightforward and the jeopardy gentle; these books are best for the younger kid set (6-8 or 9).The children are distracted by accidental misuse of the magic ring bringing a road’s worth of cats’-eye reflectors to life as crab-like Scrabbles. The Vielmetter gallery in Los Angeles is currently hosting a solo exhibition of paintings by Celia Paul, artist and author of the New York Review Books memoirs Self-Portrait and Letters to Gwen John. There’s something very particularly British (and very particularly mid-twentieth century British) about magic being found on your doorstep. Sleigh's descriptions are also a joy; she describes Rosemary's plaits as flapping like "the blades of an old pair of scissors" as she hops up the kerb. All through the novel we had rooted for the dear old broom, who gave her all to help her three friends to regain Carbonel’s rightful throne.

Every city in the world where there are cats has a king to rule over them, just as I rule over the cats of Fallowhithe.These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.