Falcon's Egg

by Luli Gray

Book Overview

Eleven-year-old Falcon has just found a mysterious egg in Central Park--a dragon's egg, though she doesn't know it yet. And when the egg hatches, magic will hatch with it. Falcon will begin to see her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440412471
• ISBN13: 9780440412472
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Yearling Books
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.2" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 8 to 11 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 6

Customer Reviews

Egged on

Well-written fantasy books work on several different levels. You have your fantastical elements on the one hand and your down-to-earth heartfelt story on the other. Your fantasy must be rooted in basic human problems that we all deal with (or at least can sympathize towards). In "Falcon's Egg" the fantastical elements are firmly in place. Magic heated eggs? Check. Mythological creature from another time and place? Check. The basic human groundings are there too. Impossible matriarch figure? Check. Kid who doesn't have any friends in school? Check. So you'd think that the simple addition of one element to another would yield the ideal story. It doesn't quite work that way. Sure, "Falcon's Egg" is a fine telling of a magical tale. It's all well and good for what it is. But there's something lacking in this tale. Though a nicely written book with plummy plotting and choice characters, it is merely good. It is not exemplary. Falcon's life is not ideal. Living with her immature and irresponsible mother and taking care of her baby brother almost on her own, she has to navigate daily through an existence of the usual kid woes. Falcon's parents divorced years ago and since then she's not seen much of her father. She has a fairly strong base of family friends, of course. There's Ardene, an adult who lives upstairs and is always happy to have Falcon over for tea. And there's Aunt Emily who has lived for an incredibly long time but is still close to her eleven-year-old great-niece. But when Falcon finds hot red egg nestled in the long grasses of Central Park, she knows she's on to something big. Soon the egg becomes a large part of Falcon's life. She tells her friends about it and soon everyone watches entranced as the scarlet sphere reveals a small equally scarlet dragon. Falcon grows deeply attached to her little ward, but a time soon comes when she must accept that Egg (as she has christened the beast) must live its own life someday. I was initially a little shocked at the incompetence of Falcon's mother at the start. A flighty children's book illustrator, she rivals only Saffy's mum in, "Saffy's Angel" for most-negligent-but-idly-interested-mother-in-a-work-of-fiction award. Missy (as Falcon calls her) is prone to completely ignoring her children when she gets paid work, constantly giving them money to purchase take-out food and letting them wander hither and thither through dark dangerous New York. Falcon, fortunately, is a capable human being but prone to utter self-hatred when she forgets to watch her little brother for even a second. Missy feels no such guilt. She's a kind of adolescent herself who takes a lot more interest in playing dress up with her children than asking Falcon how she feels or how her day went at school. There's not much of a resolution to this storyline by the end of the book either. This struck me as honest, but odd. As for the character of Falcon herself, she's fine. A loner who isn't

Fantasy and Adventure!

This book is about a girl named Falcon who finds an egg in Central Park. She brings it to her neighbour, Arlene Taylor, who takes care of the egg. Falcon's Aunt Emily finnds out soon enough and tells her friend, an ornithologist, to find out what is inside.They form a secret society, "The Friends of Egg." When the egg hatches, the creature inside is a dragon! Is it hard to keep a dragon without your mother discovering it?Read "Falcon's Egg" to find out!

Awesome

Falcons Egg was great.It was a fantastic book. Even though it was easy. the book took place in England.Ive always liked England personally. I reccomend this book to you because this book is a adventure story. And I think other kids should read this book too.

Falcon finds a mysterious egg and wants to keep it.

This is a great story about a girl who finds an egg in Central Park and takes it to a friend's house and keeps it hoping it will hatch. When it does hatch it turns out to be a DRAGON!!! She wants to keep the dragon but it turns out to be very difficult to keep a pet dragon. I am 9 years old and my brother is 11 and we both liked the book a lot.