The Fossil Snake

by Lucy M. Boston, Peter Boston (Illustrator)

When Rob puts the rare fossil of a coiled snake he has discovered under the warm radiator in his room, a wonderful thing happens.

Genres: Fantasy

53 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Lucy M. Boston (1892–1990), born Lucy Maria Wood, was an English novelist who wrote for children and adults, publishing her work entirely after the age of 60. She is best known for her "Green Knowe" series: six low fantasy children's novels published by Faber between 1954 and 1976. The setting is Green Knowe, an old country manor house based on Boston's Cambridgeshire home at Hemingford Grey. For the fourth book in the series, A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961), she won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.[1]

During her long life, she distinguished herself as a writer, mainly of children’s books, and as the creator of a magical garden. She was also an accomplished artist who had studied drawing and painting in Vienna, and a needlewoman who produced a series of patchworks.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

This brief chapter-book by L.M. Boston, creator of the wonderful Green Knowe Chronicles , follows the story of a young boy whose treasured fossil snake comes alive after he warms it under the radiator. Boston, justly celebrated for the powerful sense of place and the compassionate characterization that informs so much of her work, seems to stumble a bit here. The traces of intolerance in her portrayal of Peter, the Museum Curator, as well as the gang of boys who threaten young Rob, surprised me in an author whose cast of characters has included displaced Polish and Burmese refugees and unhappy Welsh farmboys. I wasn't sure whether to put it down to some sort of residual class prejudice, or just an elderly woman's disgust at the "loutish" behavior of the young.

All of that said, although there wasn't a lot of "meat" to this story, the reader is nevertheless rewarded with a few passages of remarkable beauty. The final chapter includes a lovely description of Rob's moonlit trek, and displays that particular sensibility to the delicate nuances of enchantment that is a hallmark of Boston's writing. Like most of her titles, this was illustrated by the author's son, Peter Boston.