Clockwork : Or All Wound Up
by Philip Pullman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Philip PullmanIllustrator: Leonid Gore
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-10
ISBN: 0590129988
Number of pages: 106
Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780590129985
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Clockwork : Or All Wound Up
Book Review: Clockwork - Highly Recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
I just recently discovered Phillip Pullman while doing research on the Whitbread Children's Book Awards. His fantasy novel (for children? young adults? adults?) The Amber Spyglass won the award for both Best Children's Literature and the over all Book of the Year Award in 2001. That novel is the third in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
Clockwork is a much shorter, perhaps less ambitious work, but in many ways just as complex. The story takes place in a German town, "in the old days..." when "...time used to run by clockwork." It is the evening before the unveiling of the next great mechanical figure for the town's famous clock. Everyone in town gathers at the local inn, including the Clock Maker's apprentice (whose clockwork figure will be his "graduation" present to the town), and the local story teller.
Karl, the apprentice clockmaker confesses to Fritz the story teller, that he has failed to complete his clockwork figure, that he indeed has nothing at all to offer for the unveiling the following day. He is despondent and speaks of killing himself before the sun comes up.
So the book begins, or one part of the book, as there are layers here: stories within stories, like the complex workings of a mechanical clock. Fritz the story teller is at the inn that night to read his next great novel aloud, a story which we learn he has not finished but hopes be able to come up with an ending as he goes along.
Along with a somewhat fairytale quality to it, Clockwork has elements of suspense and horror. This was the most "creaped out" I have been with a children's book since first reading Coraline by Neil Gaimon.
Highly recommend this book for children ages 11 to adult (if they are not too easily scared...)
Summary of Clockwork : Or All Wound Up
Frankenstein-meets-Pinnochio-meets-Faust in this incredible feat of storytelling. Fritz, the writer, spins a spine-tingling tale to cheer up Karl, the apprentice clockmaker. But rather than helping matters, the story begins to come true...While Philip Pullman's greatest popularity is as a creator of novel-length magical realism for young adults, such as The Golden Compass, he continues to explore and stretch the limits of other children's and young adult genres. Clockwork is no exception. With its inspiration lying solidly in the German romantic tradition of E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Brothers Grimm, the story begins, as all good fairy tales do, with someone whose human weakness sets events inescapably in motion. As the townspeople of Glockenheim gather in the White Horse Tavern on the eve of the unveiling of a new figure for their great town clock, Karl, the clockmaker's apprentice, reveals to Fritz, a young storyteller, that he has not been able to construct the figure. A new clock figure is expected of all apprentices, and Karl is the first in hundreds of years to fail. Fritz, in his turn, has the beginnings of a new story to tell, and as it rolls off his tongue, its dark antagonist materializes and offers Karl his dearest wish. Not surprisingly, Karl's Faustian pact brings him destruction, but an innocent child is the deus ex machina that saves another child and the spirit of the town from seemingly ineluctable oblivion. With its eerie black-and-white illustrations by Leonid Gore and its happily-ever-after ending to some thrilling suspense, Clockwork is a fine fairy tale for younger children and a thought-provoking twist on the art of narrative for older ones. --Barrie Trinkle
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