Black Nest
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Cover Story
The illustration on our cover is taken from Stories for Children by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by P J Lynch, 0 7500 0302 2, £10.00 (see Fairy Tale Favourites). The book is published by Simon & Schuster and we're grateful to them for help in using this illustration.
Like The Silk and the Skin and Race Against Time, this offers a rattling good yarn with generous helpings of family feuds, intrigue, danger, the supernatural and - refreshingly - a strong moral code throughout. Rosa discovers she's to be the keeper of the Gift, a stone which bestows power on its owner. Realising that the stone has the power to destroy as well as empower, she casts it into the sea and resumes an ordinary life. Highly recommended as a class or private reader for Lower Secondary. It avoids the trap of reinforcing fashionable anti-social values.