The Giant Slayer

Gr 4—6—It's the year 1955 and the U.S. is reeling from the effects of a polio outbreak. When 11-year-old Laurie Valentine's best friend, Dickie, contracts the disease, she finds herself spending her days in the polio ward of the local hospital with the boy. When Dickie begs Laurie to tell all the patients a story, so begins the tale of Collosso the giant and Jimmy, the young boy who will eventually become the giant-slayer. As the story progresses, Dickie and the other children in the ward begin to believe that they are actually the characters in Laurie's story, and when Laurie can't finish the tale herself, they reach within themselves to bring the story to an end. Told as a story within a story, Iain Lawrence's beautifully written tale (Delacorte, 2009) is narrated by Suzanne Toren who does an excellent job of pacing the narration to avoid any confusion between the two stories. She offers a distinctive interpretation of each character. and listeners will be swept away in a tale that is both heart wrenching and emotionally uplifting. For public and school library collections.—Amy Joslyn, Fairport Public Library, NY