The Serpent Shell

by David Ross

Equipped with a magic seashell, a little boy tries to save a ferocious-looking but tender-hearted sea serpent from death at the hands of a group of mysterious mermaids, in a tale complemented with sprawling, full-color seascapes.

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

David Sutherland Ross is a fully fledged member of that well-established species, the Scottish literary exile. Born in Oban, Argyll, he was removed at an early age to his ancestral county of Ross and Cromarty, where he grew up and went to school. Furnished with a little knowledge about all sorts of things thanks to a Scottish education, he migrated to London expecting to become a journalist, but became a publisher instead.

Having learned from blurb-writing how to represent a tangle of ill-assorted elements and random events as a unified whole, he realised he was eminently qualified to write the history of Scotland, and produced Scotland: History of a Nation. Nowadays, as chairman of a small Scottish-based publishing company, he combines publishing with writing and the compilation of anthologies, including Awa’ and Bile Yer Heid, a collection of Scottish insults and invective. Although he enjoys it all immensely, sometimes he wonders whether it isn’t too late to try something completely different, like utilising his ability to do water-divining; or perhaps opening a beach restaurant in Bali.

His favourite place in Scotland is the summit of Ben Venue; his favourite Scottish food, new-baked scones with raspberry jam; his favourite Scottish book, The Scottish National Dictionary, and his favourite Scottish phrase, “Just a sensation.”