The Boy with Two Shadows

by Margaret Mahy

A young boy who agrees to take care of a witch's shadow while she is on vacation finds that having two shadows creates some unexpected problems.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Margaret Mahy was a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. While the plots of many of her books have strong supernatural elements, her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up.

Her books The Haunting and The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance both received the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association. There have 100 children's books, 40 novels, and 20 collections of her stories published. Among her children's books, A Lion in the Meadow and The Seven Chinese Brothers and The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate are considered national classics. Her novels have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Catalan and Afrikaans. In addition, some stories have been translated into Russian, Chinese and Icelandic.

For her contributions to children's literature she was made a member of the Order of New Zealand. The Margaret Mahy Medal Award was established by the New Zealand Children's Book Foundation in 1991 to provide recognition of excellence in children's literature, publishing and literacy in New Zealand. In 2006 she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award (known as the Little Nobel Prize) in recognition of a "lasting contribution to children's literature".

Margaret Mahy died on 23 July 2012.

On 29 April 2013, New Zealand’s top honour for children’s books was renamed the New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret...

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

A boy takes such good care of his shadow that he attracts the attention of a witch who wants to ditch her own trouble-making shadow so she can have a care-free vacation.

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, imaginative story where a boy is asked by a witch to look after her shadow. All does not go well, and the witch is not the kindly, grandmotherly stereotype the reader half expects, nor is she an out-and-out villain just a somewhat selfish and independent old woman.

The boy is a fairly quiet sort and portrayed as ordinary and averse to any sort of trouble. The witch's shadow complicates things by driving off his own shadow.

The text is a little bit lengthy but coupled with very lively illustrations I think this book will hold the attention of the preschoolers. They might ask some curly questions though

[Nichola Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

An imaginative story of a young boy who takes such good care of his own shadow that a witch asks him to look after hers whilst she goes on holiday. He soon realises that having two shadows is not much fun, especially when one belongs to a witch who causes lots of mischief. Fed up, the boys own shadow takes off and leaves him and upon the witches return, shes pays him with an unwanted magic spell. The now shadow-less boy begins to feel lonely; can he find his own shadow again?

Quite a long picture book, which young children will struggle to listen too. However, it does open up lots of discussions about how and when shadows appear.

[Peter Millett · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Boy With Two Shadows certainly is creative, fresh, unexpected and quite different to what'd you'd normally pick for a bedtime story for kids, however I'm not sure if it's really a chapter book story or a picture book story. It falls somewhere in-between. Mahy is a genius and a true one-of-a kind. Her eclectic ideas and spicy word imagery is something rare and a million miles away from the mass produced kids' books of the modern era. Three stars because I couldn't quite get a feel for what sort of length story this should be, and the ending didn't seem to be something the story was leading up to.

[RM · Rating 2 out of 5]

The camel-morphing spell comes well out of left field

[Ganga Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I need video on this Pls help me.

[Amber the Human · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mahy is another author I'm attempting to read all of. We'll see I can accomplish that - she's quite prolific and foreign, so it may prove difficult. This one was a reference only book. It's cute. Mahy doesn't worry about stories making sense, she just kind of goes for it. The boy in this story is fun to read about - cautious, but fun.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longish picture book about "a little boy" who took great care of his shadow. This gets noticed by a witch who asks him to look after her shadow whilst she is on holiday. Capers result.

Too long to read at storytimes, but Y1-2, definitely.

Has that Margaret Mahy uniqueness to the storyline.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weston Woods DVD