Rowan Hood Returns: The Final Chapter (Tales of Rowan Hood Series #5)

by Nancy Springer

Overview

Guy Longhead. Jasper of the Sinister Hand. Hurst Orricson. Holt, also Orricson, brother of Hurst.To anyone else, just four names. But to Rowan Hood, the gentle healer who has waited two long years to put names to the men who murdered her mother, they are fuel to feed her desire for revenge. And so she leaves the rowan grove that had become her home in Sherwood Forest, and along with her friends, sets off to seek these men. Yet she finds that the closer she draws to them, the farther she feels from the healer she has become.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101127797
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	06/16/2005
Series:	Tales of Rowan Hood Series , #5
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	170
File size:	162 KB
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Nancy Springer has published forty novels for adults, young adults and children. In a career beginning shortly after she graduated from Gettysburg College in 1970, Springer wrote for ten years in the imaginary realms of mythological fantasy, then ventured on contemporary fantasy, magical realism, and women's fiction before turning her attention to children's literature. Her novels and stories for middle-grade and young adults range from contemporary realism, mystery/crime, and fantasy to her critically acclaimed novels based on the Arthurian mythos, I AM MORDRED: A TALE OF CAMELOT and I AM MORGAN LE FAY. Springer's children's books have won her two Edgar Allan Poe awards, a Carolyn W. Field award, various Children's Choice honors and numerous ALA Best Book listings. Her most recent series include the Tales of Rowan Hood, featuring Robin Hood’s daughter, and the Enola Holmes mysteries, starring the much younger sister of Sherlock Holmes.

Ms. Springer lives in East Berlin, Pennsylvania.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4-7-Rowan Hood, the famous outlaw's bold, brave, and sensitive daughter, founds her own band of cohorts in Sherwood Forest to avenge her mother's death. Princess Ettarde, Lionel, and Rook have been featured in separate books in the series and many of the plot elements from the earlier titles carry over into this concluding volume. It opens in spring with Etty's arrival and her revelation to Rowan of the names of her mother's murderers. The teen decides to seek vengeance, severely testing the loyalty of each member of her band. Rowan is gathering coltsfoot when she senses a profound change. Her special powers seem to be waning and she is filled with a sense of foreboding. Once she sets her course, to return to Celandine's wood, her little band undertakes a long and perilous journey. The talents of each member are called upon as they venture through a landscape filled with bounty hunters, man traps, bad weather, and poor cover. The young outlaws and Rowan's uncanny wolf-dog, Tykell, defy capture, witness two knights' fight to the death, and call on the aelfin folk for guidance. As 15-year-old Rowan faces not only physical dangers, but also the detrimental effects of revenge seeking, she approaches adulthood and an awareness of how best to use her powers. Springer weaves enough of the previous stories in for readers new to the series to follow the action, but this final volume is best read as the satisfying conclusion to the saga.-Kathryn Kosiorek, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Brooklyn, OH Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Rowan, daughter of the woodwife Celandine and Robin Hood, vows to avenge her mother's death by slaying the four knights who burned her cottage and her within it. With that vow, Rowan finds she can no longer hear the trees and stones, no longer knows, always, where her father is, and the legacy of her mother's aelfe kin. But she blindly presses forward with her friends, the minstrel Lionel, Ettarde the runaway princess and Beau, whose French malapropisms hide her wily intelligence. This last in the series allows for much description of fey woodland, harsh living and knightly battle in a story that nonetheless moves quickly. When Rowan witnesses what happens to the murderous knights, and the aelves appear to her at a climactic moment, death, revenge, sorrow and devotion culminate in a stirring end. Even though not all of the storylines are fully realized, readers of the earlier titles will be satisfied. (Fiction. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews

Rowan is aware that something within herself has changed; the voices of the woods-her connection to her mother and her healing power-are gone. She must journey to Celandine's wood for revenge, or to renew herself. With a gentle British accent, Emily Gray sweeps us back to the legend of Robin Hood's wood. The undertones of the story's suspense grow in Gray's terse narration. The distinct voices of Rowan's outlaw band echo their characters to create individualized portraits. Gray paces the story well through the ebb and flow of events, but it is her facility with the characters that especially enhances the story. W.L.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

FEB/MAR 07 - AudioFile