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Arthur The Seeing Stone was written by Kevin Crossley-Holland and published by Arthur A Levine Books in 2000. It has won several awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award. It is historical fiction with a healthy dose of magic, divided into 100 short chapters (but only 338 pages in large easy print).

The Seeing Stone is the story of a 13 year old boy in 1199 who lives on his father’s manor in the Marches (the borderland between England and Wales). Arthur is the second son of Sir John de Caldicot and his older brother Serle has already served as a squire. Arthur desperately desires to be sent away in service as a squire, but is still a page - he needs to work on his Yard-skills. Serle is the typical domineering, bullying big brother, but Arthur is excellent with words. He squirrels away in his writing-room and records everything he sees and does; hence, the story of Arthur as we read it in the book.

Merlin, the famous wizard of Arthurian legend, also lives on Sir John’s manor, protected from certain death for his blasphemous ways so Oliver the priest claims and he gifts young Arthur with an obsidian stone. Arthur learns to look into the stone and see what the stone wishes to teach him. Visions of his namesake, the famous King Arthur and visions of himself. And it is through the stone’s stories that the reader along with Arthur learn how magical deception created King Arthur’s conception. There is enough mystery to the stories as they parallel what is happening in Arthur de Caldicot’s life that the reader is held in suspense to the end of the book, eagerly turning each page to find out what will happen to both of the Arthurs.

I highly recommend this book as a supplement to any fourth-grader and above studying medieval history. Through a fascinating and delightful tale, the reader will come away with an accurate picture of life in a medieval manor. There is a too short glossary of words in the back of the book and a cast of characters list in the beginning. The reader, unfortunately, will need to refer to the characters list frequently in the first third of the book as Holland does not introduce characters consistently when we meet them in the text of the story. He counts on the reader referring to the list. I would have preferred he wrote the text as if there’d been no list.

There is also a couple of potentially problematic scenes in the book. One is a graphic scene of the slaughter of the pig for the Hallowe’en feast (Chapter titled ‘Poor Stupid’). But Holland is careful to write the scene matter-of-factly so the reader intrinsically understands that the slaughter was a part of the children’s daily lives in this period of time. A sensitive animal lover could easily skip over this scene and not miss anything pertinent to the plot. There is also the re-telling of an incident in which a girl is fondled (p. 221 of ‘The Manor Court’ chapter), but it is brief and necessary to understanding the characters involved. This too could easily be skipped if deemed inappropriate to the reader.

On the other hand, the entire Hallowe’en scene was my absolute favorite. Holland makes it absolutely fascinating to learn the rituals of 1199 on a holiday still celebrated by many. Guisers wear costumes to ward off evil spirits, “the walkers are out and about”, carved turnips by the door are lighted and a wonderful ghost story is told by the Welsh grandmother, Nain (said nine). Arthur’s mother looks into a mirror and sees things and we completely understand that this is what they thought was true and right at the time. Whether you celebrate Halloween or not, this book is worth reading just to have an educated understanding of the holiday in medieval times.

Of course, we also get a healthy dose of learning about the Crusades and King Richard and his brother King John and the turmoil England found itself in at that time. On a personal note, King John (yes, the bad guy) is one of my ancestors and so it made for especially good reading for me.

I am looking forward to reading the next two books in Holland’s Arthur Trilogy. Good fun!