Hello. I'm Catherine Weller and this is The Open Book.

This week's selection is Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton.

Once in awhile, booksellers read a certain novel that speaks right to them. I mean books like, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon or The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Dominguez. They're love letters to literature, to booksellers and librarians, and to books themselves. In fact, it's a cliché that booksellers are passionate about such books. But hey, you take your love letters where you can get them. Luckily, the love letters to us are really well written.

One such book is for readers eleven and older. Endymion Spring's author, Matthew Skelton, describes himself as a slow reader in childhood who grew into a book lover and scholar. So of course he's written a book about a book. But like most books about books, it's also about so much more.

Blake and his younger sister Duck are whiling away the fall in Oxford. His mother is a visiting fellow with a blossoming career and a failing marriage. The children have lots of time and anxiety on their hands so they explore Saint Jerome's College and its library while trying to stay out of trouble. One day Blake mindlessly drags his finger along the spines of a shelf of books, much like a stick across a white picket fence, when a book nips at him. Blake takes it off the shelf and the small leather bound volume practically snuggles into his hand. He unfastens the dragon clasp and finds nothing but blank pages inside. Then a mysterious poem appears, leading Blake and us to wonder about the strangely compelling work, "Endymion Spring."

Readers learn about young Endymion Spring in a separate narrative that alternates with Blake's story. Spring is a printers devil , an apprentice, to Johannes Gutenberg in Germany in 1493. He and Herr Gutenberg are creating a work that will change the world, a Bible pressed with moveable type. One day they receive a menacing visitor, Johann Fust who also has a special book, a volume made from the skin of a dragon that is said to hold all of the knowledge of the world. The problem is that only an innocent can read it.

I can't tell you more of the plot without being a terrible spoiler. Suffice to say: knowledge is a powerful, dangerous, and sometimes corrupting thing. And there are certain craven adults -- in old Germany and England -- who will stop at nothing to gain access to it. Skelton's descriptions of fifteenth century Mainz, and of Oxford, are lovingly detailed and fascinating. While the characters are occaissionally seem stilted, they are well enough rendered that the reader wonders, with Blake, whom can be trusted. And the printing lore, oh it will send a book geek right to heaven. Don't let the fact that Endymion Spring is a kid's book hold you back, read it with a kid and you'll both be enthralled.

You've been listening to The Open Book on KCPW. I'm Catherine Weller.

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