Sand

by William Mayne, Margery Gill (Illustrator)

Several English boys find the bones of a prehistoric monster underneath the sand which surrounds their town on the North Sea.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

William Mayne was a British writer of children's fiction. Born in Hull, he was educated at the choir school attached to Canterbury Cathedral and his memories of that time contributed to his early books. He lived most of his life in North Yorkshire.

He was described as one of the outstanding children's authors of the 20th Century by the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, and won the Carnegie Medal in 1957 for A Grass Rope and the Guardian Award in 1993 for Low Tide. He has written more than a hundred books, and is best known for his Choir School quartet comprising A Swarm in May, Choristers' Cake, Cathedral Wednesday and Words and Music, and his Earthfasts trilogy comprising Earthfasts, Cradlefasts and Candlefasts, an unusual evocation of the King Arthur legend.

A Swarm in May was filmed by the Children's Film Unit in 1983 and a five-part television series of Earthfasts was broadcast by the BBC in 1994.

William Mayne was imprisoned for two and a half years in 2004 after admitting to charges of child sexual abuse and was placed on the British sex offenders' register. His books were largely removed from shelves, and he died in disgrace in 2010.

Reviews

[Liberty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this!
So cinematic and yet convincingly familiar.
Illustrations also brillaint.

Coming here to write this review I discovered he wrote Earthfasts, which I really enjoyed watching on the telly. And was very excited.
I'd been thinking all the way through that this is a book that should be filmed.
But I also see that he disgraced himself. Very disappointing. However, I shall seek out more of his work to read.

[Luan On · Rating 2 out of 5]

Six bored British school lads come upon a disused train yard and spend a huge amount of time and effort restoring the train tracks and trolleys, met with slight resistance from the village church piano player and a surly Headmaster. In their travail they come across the fossilized remains of a prehistorical animal and switch their efforts over to digging it up and transporting it to town to win over the local school girls.

I found this a challenging read: initially it is a superb portrayal of a small English seaside village in the 60's which is being engulfed by the sand. There's a very 60's feel to the way the schoolboys interact with each other, the dialogue is peppered with casual jargon and of-the-time witticisms. Mayne writes vividly of the natural elements which daily threaten the village's inhabitants: gusts of wind blowing sand everywhere, burying buildings, the waves of the sea obliterating dunes.

However, the characterisation is a bit light...there's an ongoing sibling rivalry between chief protagonist Aimsley and his sister, and other characters Bobby, Harold and 3 others are girl-mad - leading to the prehistoric bones being dumped in their schoolyard as an atonement for an earlier prank.

The writing, beautiful in scenic descriptions at times, is bogged down by pages and chapters, and indeed 2 thirds of the book is spent detailing the boys' efforts in restoring the trains, building their tracks, laying the tracks, building fires, digging out the bones. There's good teamwork, but it all feels very boy-scout-ey and at times reads like an engineering manual. Ultimately was disappointed, wanting to care more about the characters, explore the history behind Aimsley and his angry sister, but the novel plods along.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent - very believable!