If you grew up in the late 80′s/early 90′s, one of your favorite childhood movies might have been The Neverending Story.  Now, about 15 years after I saw that exciting film as a child, I finally got to read the book it was based on.

Synopsis:

The Neverending Story is the tale of a young boy named Bastian Bathazar Bux, who when hiding from some school bullies, stumbles upon an intriguing book in an antique book shop.  He begins to immerse himself in the book in his school’s attic and joins in the adventures of Atreyu, another boy the same age who is on a dangerous quest to save his world from destruction.

The more Bastian reads, the more he finds himself linked to the book.  It seems that the characters can hear him, even see him at times.  In the end Bastian himself becomes a part of the story, and has his own adventure in trying to get back home.  However, he must do so before losing the memory of where home is, and who he is.

Review:

This book was AMAZING!  I can truly say that as a child when I first attempted to read the book, and got bored with it, I didn’t see the true beauty of the book and the story.

The first striking thing is the book itself.  Its text is printed in two colors, green and  purple.  The green is for the story within The Neverending Story world Fantastica and the purple is for the story of the “real world” in which Bastian lives.  The chapters all begin with a beautiful full-page illustration containing the first letter of the first word of the following chapter.

The story is very well-written and has interesting well-developed characters, some of which never made an appearance in the movie.  There is also a great moral point to the story in the end, that Love is something worth totally losing yourself over to learn and to share that love with others.  It is also a story of friendship and of deceit and above all, it is an adventure story.

Those who loved the original film, like I do, will be interested to discover that the first movie only covers the first half of this wonderful book.  In fact, as mentioned before, there are events and characters missing from the movie that are in the book.

The second part of the book covers the story of Bastian in Fantastica.  This was loosely interpreted in the second Neverending Story movie but, by loosely I mean REALLY loosely.  Some of the character names remain the same but the plot is completely different, as is the reason for Bastian’s loss of memory.  You really have to read the book to get a true idea of the story, which I will not spoil for you.

Overall it is an excellent book and is worth reading as an adult or as a child aged 10 or older, or as a book to read to your children.  The only thing that bugged me was how the author constantly tied up loose ends with the line “but that is a different story for a different day” or something to that affect.  Other than that, an awesome read that will truly suck you into the world of Fantastica.  I can’t recommend it highly enough!