Book description
A suddenly appearing curiosity shop owned by a small man who might, or
might not, be the Man in the Moon; a pair of strange spectacles buried
in a fishbowl full of marbles; an old window glazed with sea-green glass
found beneath a suburban house; and two adventurous boys who but the
spectacles and climb through the window into a land of goblins, ghosts
and rope ladders that reach to the moon-
Who exactly is Mr Deener, the fat man who makes magic out of bits of
coloured glass, has a passion for glazed doughnuts, and whose seeming
twin brother sleeps fitfully in an attic room? And who are the little
men that rise out of the forest on windblown sycamore leaves in order to
whisper into Mr Deener's ear? Is Mr Deener, like a fallen humpty Dumpty,
broken apart? John and Danny need to know. To find their way home
they'll have to put Mr Deener back together again and solve the mystery
of the sleeping land - a task that leads them to the pool of reflections
in the deep woods and ultimately to a house built of light and magic and
memory that sits at the edge of the heart's ocean... James Blaylock
(1950 - )
James Paul Blaylock was born in Long Beach, California, in 1950, and
attended California State University, where he received an MA. He was
befriended and mentored by Philip K. Dick, along with his contemporaries
K. W. Jeter and Tim Powers, and is regarded - along with Powers and
Jeter - as one of the founding fathers of the steampunk movement. Winner
of two World Fantasy Awards and a Philip K. Dick Award, he is currently
director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County High
School of the Arts, where Tim Powers is Writer in Residence.
