I love RMcK, and I enjoyed this book - but it was definitely not her best effort. I thought the ending was fair, but it was still a bit of a let-down. The pictures were great and went very well with the story; however, the length was too in-between for me and I had a ton of unanswered questions left at the end. Worth reading if you like elemental fantasy (did I just coin that term?), but should not be your first introduction to RMcK.

Maddy loves the Hills of Damar where she has grown up tending her sheep. She dreams of marrying her childhood sweetheart, Donal, and having a farm of her own. While Donal is off to make a fortune for their marriage, however, Maddy is strangely introduced to a stone fey and is soon captivated by his strange, earthly charms.This was a great, quick read that held my attention and left my thoughts spinning long after the story was through. I would like to find out if McKinley based this on an Irish fable or something similar. It draws on a number of important themes in such a short amount of pages. The pictures were an interesting asset to the story. I will recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It’s one I think would be useful to discuss in a classroom setting. There wasn’t any questionable material contained in this book.

I know is short and j-fiction

A short story that was made into a picture book. I can't imagine why, as this delicately eerie tale of a young woman who falls in love with? is seduced by? is enchanted by? enchants? a stone fey is in no way something that a child would enjoy. It is, however, an intriguing, sophisticated story if you're old enough to appreciate it.

Maddy spends her days herding sheep and day-dreaming about the day when her and her boyfriend Donald will own their own farm and property; but while Donald is away earning money, Maddy finds that her grandmother's stories have more truth to them than she realized. One evening, when a lamb goes missing, Maddy goes deeper into the Hills of Damar to find it, and when she does she also discovers a gray creature called a Stone Fey, just like the one's in grandmother's stories. When Maddy starts spending all of her days with the Stone Fey, her family and beloved sheepdog, Aerlich, worry that Maddy has forgotten what is really important and therefore has forgotten who she is. Can Maddy resist the mystical power of the Stone Fey before it is too late and she looses not only her family but the love of her life, Donald?

This book shows the power and mystery of young love. It shows how young girls cannot be reasoned with when discussing matters of the heart. Robin McKinley does a good job portraying the difficulty in finding oneself when torn between two loves.