Awards

• Short-listed for New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards: Junior Fiction 2013
• Short-listed for Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel (Young Adult) 2013
• Shortlisted for LIANZA Children's Book Awards: Esther Glen Award 2013.
• Shortlisted for New Zealand Post Children's Book Award: Junior Fiction 2013.
• Shortlisted for New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards: Junior Fiction 2013.
• Shortlisted for Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel (Young Adult) 2013.
• Winner of LIANZA Children's Book Awards: Esther Glen Medal for Junior Fiction 2013.

Overview

Adventure tinged with magic when a boy finds a sealskin in a cave in this exciting junior novel. Winner of Esther Glen Medal 2013. Adventure tinged with magic when a boy finds a sealskin in a cave in this exciting junior novel. Winner of Esther Glen Medal 2013. While holidaying at his father's house, Jake explores Wellington's wild south coast, with its high cliffs, biting winds, and its fierce seals. When he stumbles upon a perfectly preserved sealskin, hidden in a crevice at Red Rocks, he's compelled to take it home and hide it under his bed, setting off a chain of events that threatens to destroy his family. Red Rocks takes the Celtic myth of the selkies, or seal people, and transplants it into the New Zealand landscape, throwing an ordinary boy into an adventure tinged with magic. With its beautiful writing and eerie atmosphere, junior readers will be thrilled and moved by this captivating story. Shortlisted for the NZ Post Children's Book Awards 2013.

Full Product Details

9781869799144

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Rachael King is the author of two novels for adults- The Sound of Butterflies, which won the award for the New Zealand Society of Authors Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction at the 2007 Montana Book Awards and was published in 10 languages, and Magpie Hall. She has since published Red Rocks, a novel for junior readers, which won the Esther Glen Medal in the LIANZA Awards in 2013. Rachael has a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the acclaimed International Institute of Modern Letters at Wellington's Victoria University. In 2008 King was the Ursula Bethell Writer in residence at Canterbury University, and she has lived in Christchurch ever since. See www.rachael-king.com, which has links to her blog and Twitter accounts. King's first novel, The Sound of Butterflies, was greeted with critical acclaim from around the world, her writing variously described as 'mesmerizing . . . captivating' (The Washington Post), 'rich and evocative' (Financial Times, UK) and 'opulent' (Observer, UK), and she was singled out as 'a writer to watch' (Publishers Weekly, USA). In The New Zealand Listener, Eleanor Catton wrote- ' Italo Calvino explores the idea that all great literature exhibits the qualities of Quickness, Lightness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity. All these qualities inhered in perfect measure in Rachael King's novel The Sound of Butterflies. The story of traumatised lepidopterist Thomas Edgar had such a quiet and unsettling power that I found myself dreaming of the Amazon for weeks after finishing the book.' The Australian Literary Review found it 'engaging and tremendously well-imagined', 'a ripping yarn' with prose that 'flows as strongly as the Amazon, rich with easy lyricism', and concluded- 'This is a complete meal of a novel, ambitious and well planned.' Her second novel, Magpie Hall, confirmed King as 'a hugely talented writer' whose 'prose is effortless' (The New Zealand Herald) and who has the reader 'gripped by the power of her writing' (North & South). The New Zealand Listener summed it up- 'With its racy mix of themes - taxidermy, tattoos, gothic novels, cabinets of curiosities, old country houses and ghosts - combined with a couple of mysteries and a good dollop of sex, Magpie Hall romps along at a thoroughly entertaining pace.' Iain Sharpe, writing in Metro, concluded- 'An assured performance, it confirms that King is not just a one-off talent but here for the long haul.' Her first novel for children, Red Rocks, was described as 'a magical adventure story . . . that children and adults alike will love. Rachael King has taken the Celtic myth of the selkies and transplanted it into a New Zealand setting that kiwi kids will relate to ... There is a hint of darkness running throughout the story and you get a feeling of foreboding right from the start.' (Zac Harding, My Best Friends Are Books). Award-winning children's writer Phillipa Werry wrote of it- 'The language is rich, warm and slightly mysterious, like the cover, and the seals themselves are beautifully described as they gambol in the waves and kelp, or dive into the water like a ""silky missile""... This is a story of enchantment, but also of a boy finding the inner strength to solve problems, fight bullies, protect his family and conquer his fear.'

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