Best Book From My Childhood (The Iron Man - Ted Hughes)

Member Name: manonfireuk

Product:	The Iron Man - Ted Hughes
Date:	21/10/09 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully decriptive writing

Disadvantages: Themes of world peace may go over the heads of some readers

An Iron Giant, who has had to reconstruct itself, travels through the ocean to a small farming community and eats metal objects until a boy named Hogarth manages to trap him in a pit. After the iron giant escapes, Hogarth befriends him and takes him to a junkyard to eat happily until a giant space dragon, who eats living things but cannot be destroyed by humans, arrives and must be defeated by the iron giant.

This was my favourite book as a child, it is a great story, engaging for a young reader and also quite scary, well I at least found the big dragon monster quite scary! Age wise I would say it is suited to 5 - 10 year olds.

Ted Hughes published his short novel The Iron Giant with Random House in 1968. The text includes well thought out images of the iron giant through the similes used to describe the machine. For example, on page 41, the iron giant chose "a greasy black stove and chewed it like toffee." You can imagine that a greasy black stove might have the same effect as toffee on a big mechanical creature, I love his use of words! The iron giant, a central character first speaks on page 61, over two-thirds of the way through the story. Some might believe that perhaps the machine's characterization would be better served if he spoke earlier to Hogarth but I think it works well. What is more, the story contains themes encouraging world peace and unity. While good, the implied lesson may be too heavy handed for some young readers.

It has been a while since I read this story but from my memories I remember it as a fantastic, entertaining, scary modern fairy tale!

Summary: A great read for children