A city has many lives and layers. London has more than most. Not all the layers are underground, and not all the lives belong to the living.
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reviews
Jul 26, 2008
Heidi
rated it: 
I love the idea of the statues of London coming to "life" and enjoyed the transformation of George.The characters, human and otherwise are compelling, and you don't get hard and fast answers about whose side some of these characters are on. This book can be dark and suspenseful... not recommended for children who are prone to nightmares (One of the bad guys enjoys eating children, to give one example).
Ironhand, here I come!!!
Ironhand, here I come!!!
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Jan 11, 2011
Ithlilian
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This book seems to have fallen into the same pattern that many other YA books fall into. The first book is one long chase scene with little actual information being presented. The Alchemyst and Percy Jackson are two other examples. While I didn't mind the breakneck pace in those books, I did mind it here. Percy finds out who and what he is, and so do the twins in The Alchemyst, the characters in this book have very little idea of what is going on other than some statues and good and some are bad
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Oct 28, 2010
Jessica
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The Stone Heart was a wonderful book with an adventure that George and Edie were not playing on going on. One day George was at a museum in London and it brakes. It is a stone dragon head and when it breaks of the dragon wakes up. What is unusually and unique about this dragon is the only person that can see the dragon is George. Also when George hits this Dragon he some how gets stuck in some twisted land, were reality is there but he and nothing else is seen. There is a another twist that alon
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Mar 09, 2010
Stef
rated it: 
<This review is for the entire series>
The Stoneheart Trilogy ROCKS! (no pun intended)
I couldn't put this series down - just like the Harry Potter books. Although completely different...these books really pull you in. I `read' it via audio books (performed by the fantastic Jim Dale - who also read the HP books) and it was fabulous! The way it is written is completely refreshing...instead of writing "the status was big and looked like it was breathing" th More...
The Stoneheart Trilogy ROCKS! (no pun intended)
I couldn't put this series down - just like the Harry Potter books. Although completely different...these books really pull you in. I `read' it via audio books (performed by the fantastic Jim Dale - who also read the HP books) and it was fabulous! The way it is written is completely refreshing...instead of writing "the status was big and looked like it was breathing" th More...
Jun 13, 2009
Hilarie
rated it:
I have always loved sculptures. I can remember visiting the museum with my parents as a little girl and being truly frightened by some of the more monstrous images carved in stone, with their malicious smiles that exposed far too many teeth for my small child imagination. I think deep down I was always afraid they were going to suddenly come alive. In Stoneheart, that is exactly what happens to George Chapman, a 12 year-old English boy who expresses his frustration in the wrong way at the wro
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Jun 10, 2009
Josie
rated it:
This was a real 'page turner'! You can't wait to read what will happen next. However,it is a challenging book. For one thing it is very British. If you were going to use this with a group, it might help to prepare the students with some visuals of London. Talk with them about even though English is spoken in London there are some main differences in what we mean when we say 'biscuit' and what someone in London means by a biscuit. For instance, the main character talks about not wanting to gra
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Apr 02, 2009
Adrienne
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In Stoneheart, we meet George, a boy who has a hard time getting along in school and is generally a bit of a prat, and who gets the story going when he runs afoul of the taints. Taints are a faction of the statuary of London; they are carvings and statues that can come alive and they don’t like people or spits. Spits are the other faction, and they’re the good ones, as they have a sort of soul. As George is running from a particularly nasty taint, he meets the Gunner, one of the statues on a WWI
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Dec 19, 2011
Migdalia
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Twelve-year-old George Chapman breaks the head from a stone dragon outside the Natural History Museum, and he accidentally and unknowingly awakens an ancient power. A stone Pterodactyl unpeels from the wall and starts chasing George who runs for his life but he's the only one who can see the statues coming alive. Finally, he is saved by another statue (one of a WWI gunner), but his adventure doesn't end there. Rather, he learns that the statues have been on a shaky truce, and he's basically dest
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Jun 23, 2011
Great start to the triology -- makes you want to read more to find out what is really going on.
George is a boy with no friends; an outcast. He lives with his mom the actrss, and his dad has died.
Through an angry moment outside a London museum, he breaks off a dragon head off the building. This sets in motion a chain of events that involves the statues and gargoyles of London coming to life and chasing him.
There is a plucky girl character named Edie who has a More...
George is a boy with no friends; an outcast. He lives with his mom the actrss, and his dad has died.
Through an angry moment outside a London museum, he breaks off a dragon head off the building. This sets in motion a chain of events that involves the statues and gargoyles of London coming to life and chasing him.
There is a plucky girl character named Edie who has a More...
Jun 20, 2009
Jessica
rated it:
Rather like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, written for the younger set. George disgraces himself at a school trip to the museum, and finds himself being terrorized by a pterodactyl statue that peels itself off the facade of the museum. With the help of a bronze WWI statue and a young girl who can not only see the living statues but experience the past when she touches things, George needs to find the Stone Heart to put his world back in order. I kind of wished that there would be less running arou
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Jan 18, 2009
Patrick
rated it:
I'm reading a hardback from the library, but it has this cover.
This didn't jump out at me, but lots of my kids at school are enjoying this series. It's better than I expected. I'm liking it. It is confusing at the beginning, well, actually throughout the whole story and into the next book, but it makes sense in this context. The situation is one where the characters credibly wouldn't have a clue about the new world they discover and there really wouldn't be pause in the action or More...
This didn't jump out at me, but lots of my kids at school are enjoying this series. It's better than I expected. I'm liking it. It is confusing at the beginning, well, actually throughout the whole story and into the next book, but it makes sense in this context. The situation is one where the characters credibly wouldn't have a clue about the new world they discover and there really wouldn't be pause in the action or More...
Jan 24, 2012
Bonnie Jean
rated it:
I actually rather enjoyed reading Stoneheart. Jim Dale does an excellent job narrating the book (no surprise there) and I thought that the premise of the story (12-year-old George does something to accidentally kick himself into an alternate universe where the statues in London are alive, but not all are friendly) was pretty well executed, though the division between the 2 types of statues seems somewhat arbitrary to me. I started out not liking either of the main characters much, but they bot
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Nov 23, 2010
Erika
rated it: 
I read this book about a year ago, maybe year and a half. I re-read it this weekend and, just like the last time, I thought it was an okay book. The idea of the statues coming to life is great, but the written execution is not up to it.
Even though the story is enjoyable, there's way too much description of irrelevant things (taxis passing by, unrelated buildings, etc.), the dialogues are bland, and -in my opinion- there aren't enough action scenes, and the few ones the story has are More...
Even though the story is enjoyable, there's way too much description of irrelevant things (taxis passing by, unrelated buildings, etc.), the dialogues are bland, and -in my opinion- there aren't enough action scenes, and the few ones the story has are More...
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Jan 30, 2012
Krystl
rated it:
There was nothing really wrong with this book, it was just lack luster and I lost my concentration a lot, lost the story. There were too many boring action sequences without much story in between. Plus, the narrator is one I'm NOT fond of-he goes overboard with voices and sound effects and makes everything sound like it was written for a short attention span two year old. Hearing a narrator making chewing sounds is way over the line, it's disgusting and annoying and it makes me want to hurt some
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Oct 06, 2011
Amanda
rated it:
Listening to this on the Nano - love the narrator and fast-paced story thus far!
Update: Jim Dale is the narrator for these books, and he does a smashing job with the interpretations of the characters and voices - the story is unique and unusual, and the main characters of George and Eadie are sympathetic and seem like pretty good kids on quite the adventure. Soon as I finished listening to the first book, I immediately popped to the SPL.org website to checkout the next book i More...
Update: Jim Dale is the narrator for these books, and he does a smashing job with the interpretations of the characters and voices - the story is unique and unusual, and the main characters of George and Eadie are sympathetic and seem like pretty good kids on quite the adventure. Soon as I finished listening to the first book, I immediately popped to the SPL.org website to checkout the next book i More...
Nov 17, 2010
Aleea
rated it:
Really, really neat idea. It was very well done for the first third of the book. After that point either the author liked seeing ink on paper or the editor forgot to edit. Too much telling, way too much description, too much pointless dialogue. It felt like every noun was preceded by at least two adjectives. Adjectives are good... in moderation.
I read this to my family out loud so maybe I was extra-sensitive to these faults. Not only was I catching typos and subject-verb agreeme More...
I read this to my family out loud so maybe I was extra-sensitive to these faults. Not only was I catching typos and subject-verb agreeme More...
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Dec 11, 2011
Dayna
rated it:
The first book in The Stoneheart Trilogy. When 12-year-old George breaks the head off a stone dragon in a fit of anger little does he realize that he will find himself running unseen through another London. A London in which statues come to life. He soon realizes that no one sees the living statues but Edie who is also trapped in this strange world. To repair the damage he has done and prevent a war between the statues of London he must find the Stone Heart and make a sacrifice. But he only has
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Jun 20, 2010
Jody
rated it:
When 12 year old George takes out his anger on a stone carving, strange things start to happen. Suddenly, things that should not be moving at all begin to chase him around London. And to his horror, George seems to be the only one who can see them. He finally finds an ally when a statue steps down to help him, but his journey is only just beginning. Without any clue as to what’s going on, George is thrust into a world where nothing is as it seems and is forced to fight against time in order to g
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Aug 28, 2009
Heidi
rated it:
This is the first audio book I chose due to the reader, rather than the author or title. I think Jim Dale could make any book sound good, though it took a little while for me to forget this voice was Harry Potter, and that voice was Dumbledore.
I'm not sure, but I think I would have liked it less if I had read rather than listened to it. It is an interesting premise for a world...that architectural sculptures have lives and wars and intrigues with the rest of us being none the wiser. More...
I'm not sure, but I think I would have liked it less if I had read rather than listened to it. It is an interesting premise for a world...that architectural sculptures have lives and wars and intrigues with the rest of us being none the wiser. More...
Apr 24, 2010
This is a great book, full of secrets and non-stop edge of your seat action and suspense. The author does not develop the characters but for bare essentials from the beginning, which is usually a no-go in books, but it actually really works in this book, and leaves you wanting to know more on every turn of the page. You will be glad to know, however, that about half way through, he hints upon some things via flashback that begin to let you in on a little bit about the characters, but a lot of
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Jan 06, 2012
Jodi
rated it:
I'm guessing (since no one else mentioned it) that it is only the Kindle edition that has some serious issues with copy editing. Specifically a lack of quotation marks in a way that is confusing and sometimes the title of the chapter is inserted into the regular text. Believe me, I don't often notice these sorts of things so it's got to be pretty bad for me to notice.
Other than that the book is fine but not much more than fine. Interesting premise, I'll probably read the others jus More...
Other than that the book is fine but not much more than fine. Interesting premise, I'll probably read the others jus More...
Apr 12, 2011
Juliana
rated it:
This is a book my daughter read and handed to me - I try to read all the books she wants me to read. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I actually liked this book. Without giving too much away, two children in London can see statues moving, and a fast-paced adventure occurs when it becomes clear that danger is at hand. It was an interesting new twist (for me) in a fantasy book, and it made me more curious about the various statues and monuments in London. I'll probably read the other two books in
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Oct 22, 2010
Lauren
rated it:
Set in modern-day London, a young boy (11 years old) runs off from his school field trip (and I don't blame him all too much which you will understand why should you read the book) and in anger, breaks a statue, catapulting him into the midst of another London, one where the statues (for the most part) are alive and at odds with one another. This book from that moment on is jam-packed with action and suspense and character growth. I rather like some of the supporting cast as well. A definite
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Dec 07, 2011
Alexis
rated it:
Young George Chapman is having a very bad day. In a fit of rage, he broke the head off a stone dragon outside the Natural History Museum, and now he's running for his life from gargoyles, dragons, minotaurs, and monsters as the statues of London come alive! Somehow, George is the only one who can see them--well, George and a young runaway named Edie, a 'glint' who can see the past. With the help of some human statues ('spits'), George and Edie try to figure out why the evil statues ('taints')
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Mar 24, 2010
Meredith
rated it:
I have had Stoneheart on my To Be Read list for a while now, but it wasn't available at my local library and I didn't quite want to shell out the money to buy it. Not when we have such fantastic books like the The Hunger Games to buy. But the Lords of Reading smiled down on me when a friend walked into school one day, carrying this book. I gasped out that I have been wanting to read this book for ages, and she kindly lent it to me (once she was done, of course). It has an amazing premise: not on
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Mar 21, 2009
Cheryl
rated it:
Fantasy set in modern London. From book "A city has many lives and layers. London has more than most. Not all the layers are underground, and not all the lives belong to the living." Twelve-year-old George Chapman breaks the head off a stone dragon and his adventure begins. Georges action upset the fragile trues of the stone statues and carvings of modern London. He must survive attacks by stone gargoyles, dragons and other soulless creations to make restorations for the turmoil he
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Feb 14, 2009
Allison
rated it:
from the first line I had very high expectations for this book. I was very excited to read the story, and really interested in how the author would deal with a character who seemed determined to keep the world at a distance. As I read, I waited patiently for some depth, some mystery that would finally grab my interest. Unfortunately, I found the book flat- not bad, or unbelievable or poorly written- but just ordinary. There was nothing unique about it, nothing that kept me anxiously turning page
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Jul 31, 2008
Hana
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Stoneheart is an enjoyable fantasy for young readers. The reader meets the main character, a twelve year old boy, on a school fieldtrip to the Natural History Museum where he becomes a victim of the class bully. The teacher takes him aside and demands an apology, which George cannot give him, and is left to stand alone, and unsupervised, in the central hall until the field trip is over. Of course, George doesn’t stay there. He heads out of the museum, and takes out his frustrations on a carvi
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Oct 22, 2007
Debbie
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I actually listed to the audio version (Jim Dale rocks!) of this title. Stoneheart is the first book of the new Stoneheart trilogy. In this volume 12 year old George is a loner in present day London. On a school field trip he gets in trouble and ends up running away from his tour group. In a fit of anger, he breaks part of a dragon statue standing outside of the museum. This plunges George into an “unseen" London where statues come to live. With the help of Edie, a girl who attracts t
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Aug 04, 2008
Bouncingsoul24
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Stoneheart is a decently written teen fiction fantasy. I can see inspirations of Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Stroud with a bit of Harry Potter in the book.
The character development is somewhat lacking, but hopefully will be further explored in the sequel Ironheart. The storyline is what really catches one’s attention- the idea of statues possessing life transferred by their makers/creaters. The statues are roughly divided into good (those based on people) and bad (Gargoyles, Demons, et More...
The character development is somewhat lacking, but hopefully will be further explored in the sequel Ironheart. The storyline is what really catches one’s attention- the idea of statues possessing life transferred by their makers/creaters. The statues are roughly divided into good (those based on people) and bad (Gargoyles, Demons, et More...
