Endymion Spring

Book: Endymion Spring
Author: Matthew Skelton
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: book finds boy. book bites boy. boy must solve book's mysteries and guard its ancient secrets from nasty scholars at Oxford.

Blake Winters and his little sister, Duck, are spending the year with their mother at Oxford. She spends all day in the library researching, so Blake and Duck are stuck there, too. One day, a book bites Blake. No, really- it's got fangs and everything. The book is really, really old, and the cover says only Endymion Spring, whatever that means. When Blake opens it, there are a lot of blank pages and one very mysterious riddle, and he's the only one who can see it. The book is powerful, it seems to have a life of its own, and there' s something it wants from Blake.

The other storyline in the book begins 500 years ago in Germany, where a young printer's assistant named Endymion works with Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. A very sketchy character named Fust shows up with a very creepy, carved chest that practically screams "I'M EVIL!!", and Endymion finds magic, mystery, and danger within.

This book got oodles of hype before it was published, and it is a good read- if you like books about libraries, books, and mysteries with a dark and sinister historical twist. A bit of a Da Vinci Code angle, if you like sort of thing. But does this story have the crazy blockbuster appeal of Da Vinci? No, not really. But it's a decent readalike for teen DVC fans.