Additional Book Information
Series: NYRB Kids
ISBN: 9781681371665
Pages: 96
Publication Date: October 24, 2017
Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry
by Rosalie K. Fry
Fiona McConville is a child of the Western Isles, living on the Scottish mainland. City life doesn’t suit Fiona and at age ten she is sent back to her beloved isles to live with her grandparents. There she learns more about her mother’s strange ways with the seals and seabirds; hears stories of the selkies, mythological creatures that are half seal and half human; and wonders about her baby brother, Jamie, who disappeared long ago but whom fishermen claim to have seen. Fiona is determined to find Jamie and enlists her cousin Rory to help. When her grandparents are suddenly threatened with eviction, Fiona and Rory go into action. Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry is a magical story of the power of place and family history, interwoven with Scottish folklore. Rosalie K. Fry’s novel, which was the basis for John Sayles’s classic 1994 film The Secret of Roan Inish, is back in print for the first time in decades.
Praise
The setting is vividly evoked, and the fantasy elements are woven seamlessly into the homey details of domestic island life. Still fresh and immediate sixty years after its publication.
—Martha V. Parravano, The Horn Book Magazine
This exquisitely-written, mystical tale is unique, neither fact, nor pure fancy. As one young reader said, it could be true, but it really wasn’t. Maybe this is why it provokes deep afterthought, and wonder.
—The New York Times
A poetic story which rests heavily on the folk traditions of the Western Isles and which contains much of that poetry of language and conception native to the traditional Scots.
—Kirkus Reviews