The writing is superb, the plot engrossing and the images and themes can last in the reader's mind for a very long time. This thought-provoking, delightful book has got to be one of the all time great fantasies for children. 180 pages.įind this book: Local Bookstore, Amazon, B&N

Investigate the philosophy about death in religions other than your own.What would it do to the quality of life? What accommodation would societies have to make? What if everyone did live even twenty years longer than the expected years today? thirty years? one hundred? Find current statistics and recalculate them with the hypothetical longer life.Read or reread the sections of Tuck Everlasting, Charlotte's Web and Everywhere (see below) which talk about life and death.Make a venn diagram comparing this book with A Wrinkle in Time.Ĭompare this book's philosophy about death with that in The Giver.and if you trust in yourself, your voice holds all the power of truth.' is another quote from the book. 'If you trust in the Pattern, you trust in yourself.How do you understand the Sages' statement: 'There are two kinds of death for a star, and they are as different as hope is different from despair.'.What did you think of grandfather's fate in the book? Would you have written it that way? How did the author help you accept it?.What do you think the author's feeling about death is? Does that coincide with your own beliefs?.They learn about the desire to live forever in contrast to the rightness of the pattern where the death of one thing means the birth of something else. Kate, using a magical butterfly, joins him and they begin a voyage into a world where Darkness and the Pattern are battling it out. Grandfather becomes 'heartlight' and travels to a distant star which he believes may hold the answer. Soon his laboratory is plagued by a destructive presence and then the sun begins to lose power.

He has succeeded in making a small amount of this magical substance which has the power to liberate your 'Heartlight' so that you can travel to anyplace in space. Kate's grandfather has been working in his laboratory to uncover an unknown element in the heart of stars, called 'Pure Concentrated Light'.

Heartlight is the first book in the Adventures of Kate trilogy. Even the author recognizes similarities in plot to Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time which many students will have read previously. The book has elements of physics, metaphysics, adventure, science fiction and fantasy, broadening its appeal to many audiences. That's partly because of the attendant theme of love conquering all. While this captivating fantasy's theme of the role of death is a somber one, the writing is not.

Heartlight by T.A. Barron