The Power of the Rellard

by Carolyn F. Logan

Lucy, repeating the fourth grade after a malady of the nervous system has left her with a withered arm, finds herself and her siblings in the midst of a power struggle with agents of an ancient evil.

Genres: Fantasy, Childrens, Magic

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Carolyn Logan was born and grew up in Iowa, in the Mid West of the United States of America. After several years as a secondary school art teacher in Honolulu and San Fransisco, she married and subsequently taught in primary schools in Peru and Denmark. She lived and worked in Perth, Western Australia, for many years as a librarian, teacher and editor. She now lives in the USA.

-from: Fremantle Press

Reviews

[Anastasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I checked out this book from the library on a near constant basis when I was younger, before convenient online used book shopping. I tried to find a copy everywhere, and was about to have one ordered at great expense from a used bookstore hunter when I stumbled across it in a books a million clearance bin. Apparently, other people didn't love it as much as I did. The story premise struck me as fairly unique at the time: a girl is seriously injured, leaving her arm dead, and to make her feel better her brother and sister play a game with her over the summer, a game that is supposed to end in the winner taking on magical power. it goes into traditional fantasy territory from there, but the school-based dramas and evil teachers are successful even if they are caricatures. The slow move from the seemingly real to the perfectly outrageous kept me thoroughly entranced as a kid, and I still have that mass market paperback waiting for me on my shelf, somewhere between Harry Potter and the Chrestomanci novels.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book is for young readers, it is still my all-time favorite fiction book. I have read it three times and still love it.

[Daneca · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourites when I was kid. I loved this book! I can still grasp the emotions I felt throughout reading it. The characters are truly captivating and the ending blew me away.

[L (Nineteen Adze)]

I don't want to put stars on this one because it's hard to pin down. When I was eight-ish, this book felt beautiful and endless. Coming back to it as an adult, there's some fun from the nostalgia and some chapters really shine, but I don't think I would enjoy it as much if I was reading it for the first time.

A key part of the charm is the way that the Power is so real to Lucy, Shelley, and Georgie and so utterly an imaginary concern or a game to all the adults. That element landed more strongly when I was a child, I think, and it's great that the oldest ally in the book is a teenager-- there's no guiding adult mentor figure to shape how Lucy uses her power or to intervene when things are dangerous, which gives the story a certain wildness.

I'm glad I found this one-- I smiled to see the cover again-- but it's rare to find books that hold up to the glory you remember.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't remember reading this book until I found a copy in my library's book sale room. That cover image is pretty hard to forget! The story was something about three siblings, the youngest Lucy having a withered hand, and they play a game that somehow becomes real.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did anyone besides me and my sixth grade best friend read this book? I remember being obsessed with it...I wanted it to be my life.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the fact that I remember this book and at least a few of the details says a lot. I thought it was mighty interesting when I was about 10

[Elika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book captivated my imagination more than almost any other when I was a kid. I still cherish this story.

[Rhiannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book so many times as a kid, and I still own and read it from time to time. It is one of my childhood favorites!

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

So . . . they were given the power to defeat the evil power that only showed up because they had the power?

[Ariel Schnee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book!^_^

I first read it back when I was waaay much younger. I'm 47 now. I bought it when it first came out in paperback in Waldenbooks.

This is one of the GREAT books! One I so immensely enjoyed reading then. Seeing it here takes me back to my younger years, back when everything was better.

[Capn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"She really believes, Shelley!"
"She can't!"
"When I put that ring thing on her head, she shivered."
"C'mon, Georgie . . ."
"She did, Shelley, she did! She thinks she is the Rellard! Shelley, what'll we do now?" . . .
And so, a game invented to pass the time one summer becomes real, plunging Georgie, Shelley and their little sister into fantastic adventure - a battle of wits and magic against the forces that seek to destroy them and their home.
Their enemies are powerful; all the more because they hide behind commonplace disguises. But their friends are powerful too, and do all they can to help and protect the children as they struggle to control and protect the mysterious gift Lucy has been given - the Power of the Rellard.
An exciting and gripping adventure, winner of the Angus & Robertson Writers for the Young Fellowship.

Cover illustration by Tony Pyrzakowski

POWER PLAY
Shelley, and her younger brother, Georgie, are getting worried! They made up a game - an elaborate series of athletic 'trials' - to cheer up their little sister, Lucy, who's recovering from a bad illness, and now she's getting all weird about it. Everyone had been so pleased when Lucy won the contest despite her weakness that they decided to celebrate. They crowned her the Rellard, Wielder of Power, and conferred upon her a special 'magic talisman'. It was fun at first, until the game started to take control! Now Lucy believes in the magic and claims that a fantastic winged creature has asked their help to fight a dark and terrifying evil. Georgie and Shelley don't know what to think. After all, the Rellard is just a game . . . isn't it?

On OpenLibrary

Wow. Easy 5 stars for me, and I've gotten stingier over time. This was fantastic. I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but I don't care. I read books for my own enjoyment, and because I have this goal to build a small library of awesome children's books at home, retaining all those dusty, obscure and half-remembered stories that your local library can't afford to give shelf space to any longer, but which are orders of magnitude better than the contents of the flashy and bright covers that Big Publishing has recently spewed out.

I don't believe that good stories and deft writing go out of date, even if the referenced tech is obsolete (landline telephones, film cameras, and money orders in this case) - it's probably accidental educational content, now anyway. And if the kids described are from an over-represented ethnic majority and the boy is the brainy one for a change, great. What publishers and marketers get wrong (but don't care about - it's all about making $$$ after all!) is giving us too much of the same stuff, all at once. It makes bookshops and libraries in any snapshot of time quite homogeneous. My brain prefers the novelty of heterogeneity, hence my plans to create a wonderful home library that is anachronistic and therefore properly diverse and varied (content, style, genre, characters, cover art, you name it!).

I don't want to give away too much of the plot here. I love how it unfolded, who it scooped up, the seeds of doubt it would sow in young minds (does a teacher's excellent standing among parents and fellow students mean she can't be abusive? Is your new best friend truly your friend or an evil entity, and what's a good real-world test to employ to find out? Can you be blinded by flattery and turned against your own family by someone with nefarious intentions? Are all minds the same on the inside? Are all parents responsible? How much do siblings differ internally? All good questions!).

It has a snowstorm, and later, demonic tornadoes. No surprise then that this was written by an American, even though it was published in AUS and the UK. The author's blurb is the most captivating one I ever read:

Carolyn Logan was born and grew up in Iowa, in the American Mid-West. After a time as an art teacher in Hawaii and San Francisco, she married and subsequently taught in Peru and Denmark. She now works as a librarian in Perth, Western Australia, living near the beach in company with an independently-minded cat.
The Power of the Rellard is her first novel.

I've never met her, but am willing to bet I'd adore her. And I definitely want to read more of her books - this one is headed straight for the favourites shelf. I have a physical copy, a barely-touched hardcover with THE silkiest pages I've ever flipped. But if you don't come across an affordable copy, please know that you can borrow a scanned one online from OpenLibrary (free account - you just have to have a library account so publishers can't completely destroy them. Shame on HarperCollins, Penguin RandomHouse, Wiley and the others - you shall not be forgiven!)