Book review: The Neverending Story

I finished reading aloud The Neverending Story (Michael Ende) to the girls last night.

It is a complicated, multi-layered, thought-provoking book, which also manages the double-task of being an un-put-down-ably exciting story.  I completely and utterly recommend it to everyone.  It definitely deserves to be on the list of the world's great novels.

If you have watched the movie, but not read the book, then don't be mislead -- the movie is less than half the book, and completely misses the heart and soul of the book.

Giving this sort of open-ended praise for the book, as above, is easy.  What is more challenging is trying to review the specifics of the book.  Saying too much will definitely spoil it for those who haven't read it.  Each idea and aspect of the book builds on previous twists, which really shouldn't be revealed until you have read it.

So, what can I say?

The story is centrally about a boy, Bastian Balthazar Bux, who has an unhappy life.  His mother died, and his father is grieving and distant.  He is fat and awkward, and gets teased by his peers.  While getting chased by bullies he stumbles into a bookshop where, after talking with the owner for a while, he steals an interesting-looking book.  He is late for school and wags class, hiding in the school attic to read the book he stole.

The book Bastian reads is The Neverending Story, an adventure story about a strong, heroic boy, around his own age, who is trying to save his world from destruction.  And thus we, as readers, start to read a book within a book.

And I had better stop there with the retelling.  Any more than that will spoil the amazing twists and turns that happen next.

Except to say that Michael Ende's father was one of Germany's first Surrealist painters.  And that is worth mentioning.  I encourage you to read up on Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism, and Dada, one of the big influences on Surrealism.  Understanding the reasoning behind these artistic movements will give even more depth to this book.

Alongside reading this book to Mulan and Miya, I have been wanting to recognise that if Mulan were going to school she would have started intermediate school this year.  Amongst other things, I have been trying to think of ways for Mulan to start writing responses to set questions, rather than simply free writing as she typically does.

So, for this book, my first set writing task for Mulan was to get her to write a creative "what happens next" piece.  This was at a point in the book, about halfway, where it was particularly open-ended (I won't say where or what, as it would spoil things if you haven't read it).  Mulan wrote a few pages, very fluently continuing the story as she saw it (Mulan's continuation was very different from the actual story).

This morning, I explained to Mulan that I would now like her to write more of an essay-style piece, reviewing the book and perhaps comparing her story with the actual book.  Mulan looked a bit worried/shocked at the thought of doing this, so she might need some encouragement/nagging.  But I know she has lots of opinions on this, as she was often talking about it as we were reading together.  It will just be a matter of getting her to order her ideas in her head and get them onto paper.  We'll see what happens.