Blood Red, Snow White
n/a
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The Russian Revolution. Fairy tale, spy thriller, love story. One man's life during the last days of the Romanovs, beautifully imagined by award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick. Shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award.
Set in the rich and atmospheric landscape of Russia during the revolution that sent shockwaves around the world, this is the partly true story of Arthur Ransome - a writer accused of being a spy.
Fictionalising history and blending it with one man's real life, Marcus Sedgwick expertly crafts this innovative and stimulating novel of three parts - a fairy tale full of wise and foolish kings, princesses, wishes and magic; a bleak and threatening spy thriller, and a love story . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British children's book author Arthur Ransome captured Printz-winner Sedgwick's (Midwinterblood) imagination with his 1916 book, Old Peter's Russian Tales. These stories, coupled with Ransome's involvement in the Russian revolution as a journalist, inspired this multifaceted historical novel, written in three parts and originally published in 2007. The first section sets the scene of the social and political landscape leading up to the revolution; Sedgwick uses vivid, fairy tale imagery to describe historical events, such as a bear that represents the growing discontent among the Russian populace ("The bear, which by now was as large as the cathedral on Catherine's canal, rose on its hind legs.... As it fell, it came apart. It disintegrated. It fell like brown snow, but each flake was a person"). The rest of the novel, written in episodic vignettes, is more straightforward in painting a man whose attachment to Russia seemingly stems from the love of the woman who would eventually become his second wife. Sedgwick's admiration for Ransome is clear from the outset and bolstered by appended notes about where the novel dovetails with and diverges from real-life history. Ages 12 up.
