Midnight for Charlie Bone : [children of the red king]. Book 1

Select an Action

Title:

Midnight for Charlie Bone : [children of the red king]. Book 1

Author:

Nimmo, Jenny, author.

Beale, Simon Russell.

Series:

Children of the red king ;

Series Number:

Summary:

Charlie Bone's life with his widowed mother and two grandmothers undergoes a dramatic change when he discovers that he can hear people in photographs talking.

General Note:

Subtitle from container.

Compact disc.

Edition:

Unabridged ed.

Physical Description:

6 sound discs (ca. 72 min. each) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Genre:

Audiobooks.

Subject Term:

Magic -- Juvenile fiction.

Schools -- Juvenile fiction.

Geographic Term:

England -- Juvenile fiction.

Author(s):

Beale, Simon Russell.

Publisher:

Random House/Listening Library,

Publication Date:

2003

2004

ISBN:

9781400086146

Publication Information:

New York : Random House/Listening Library, p2003.

Award Note:

Sasquatch Reading Award nominee, 2005.

Call Number:

CDB J NIMMO

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607001816159	Juvenile Books on CDs	NIMMO	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Charlie doesn't want to believe it when he discovers that he can hear the thoughts of people in photographs. But his horrible aunts are delighted--it means that he is one of the chosen and must attend the Bloor's Academy for gifted children. Once there, Charlie realizes that some of his classmates have equally mysterious powers, and soon Charlie is involved in uncovering the mysterious past of one of them.

Book One in The Children of the Red King series

Author Notes

Born in Windsor, England in 1944, Nimmo's father died when she was only five. By the time she was fourteen, she had gone to two boarding schools and had joined a theater company in England. Her unstable childhood led to a series of diverse jobs where she worked in several fields as a nanny, a photographic researcher, and a floor manager at the BBC. At the BBC she became a director of Jackanory, a children's show. After having her first child, Nimmo left the BBC and began work on her first novel, "The Bronze Trumpeteer." Nimmo is best known for two series of fantasy novels: The Magician Trilogy (1986 to 1989), contemporary stories rooted in Welsh myth, and Children of the Red King (2002 to 2010), featuring Charlie Bone and other magically endowed school children. The Snow Spider, first of the Magician books, won the second annual Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the 1987 Tir na n-Og Award as the year's best original-English-language book with "authentic Welsh background". The Stone Mouse was highly commended for the 1993 Carnegie Medal.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-6-Young readers are getting to be quite conversant with the characteristics of British boarding schools, especially those for the magically inclined. Jenny Nimmo's novel (Scholastic/Orchard, 2003) has postulated a set of characters the Endowed who exhibit very odd magical abilities that seem to have no purpose or usefulness at all and appear randomly in descendants of the nearly-mythical Red King. There are two branches of these descendants: the perplexed but essentially good people who have no idea why they can make light bulbs explode or hear voices coming from photographs, and the evil ones who seem to be part of a very complex and as yet unrevealed sinister scheme. This unusual take on magical abilities makes for a distinctly different set of circumstances and plot. Bloor's Academy which schools both Endowed and artistically gifted unendowed children has a much darker feel to it than Hogwart's but is still perfectly recognizable with its prefects, dining hall, dormitories, and so on. Charlie Bone, who discovers his Endowment at age 11 and has grown up in enigmatic family circumstances which he is only just beginning to figure out, makes many friends among the Endowed as well as the musicians, artists, and actors who people the school. This first tale from a projected series benefits from a reading by Simon Russell Beale which is rife with atmosphere and mystery. His voice, rich with nuance and emotion, brings to life each person and situation, and embellishes the story with a sense of drama and suspense fully appropriate to the tone of the writing. Charlie unravels one mystery of a missing Endowed girl in the course of setting the stage for dramatic future adventures. Not as complex at least not yet as the Harry Potter books, the promise exists for a continued completely fresh angle on the magic story. Many hints are provided of depths to be plumbed in future entries in the series, and a few plot lines in particular are already obvious. Listeners are going to be well rewarded in this audiobook, and they'll be anticipating future episodes.-Jane P. Fenn, Corning-Painted Post West High School, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

The first in the projected Children of the Red King series, this paper-over-board British fantasy reads like ersatz Harry Potter. Charlie Bone, a likable "ordinary" boy of about 10, lives with his loving widowed mom and her mother, a salt-of-the-earth type, and his foreboding but wealthy paternal relations, who are "endowed" (with psychic abilities) and who watch Charlie for signs of the Yewbeam family gift. When Charlie suddenly begins to "hear" subjects in photographs, the Yewbeams delightedly pack him off to Bloor's Academy for similarly gifted children. Before he enrolls, however, voices from photographs lead him into a mystery, pointing to a suspicious baby "adoption" and involving clues about his own father's past; while these are the most original elements here, they, too, are familiar. At the Hogwarts-like Bloor's, Charlie is thrust into an ongoing struggle of good vs. evil, accompanied by new friends (an albino orphan, a drama diva and a musician) and confronted with mesmerizing foes (chiefly, the scion of the power-mad Bloor family). Nimmo writes solidly, but her powers of invention (shown in, for example, her Griffin's Castle) cannot withstand the comparison she invites with J.K. Rowling. Next in the series, The Time Twister. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

School Library Journal Review

Publisher's Weekly Review