The Iron Giant
by Ted Hughes

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Book Reviews of The Iron Giant

Book Review: Ironic Iron
Summary: 5 Stars

Readers need know nothing about the Cold War, either, though Hughes clearly created this story as an allegory about the evil of war. He gave the characters very little development. Hogarth, the boy who centers the movie based very loosely on this book, functions as a sort of trigger. But there's not much explanation about why he acts, or why anyone acts, for that matter.

Nevertheless, the plot will draw even the most tortured second-grade reader into its tangle of fantasy, words and poetry. And once there, he will find it impossible to escape until the book is done. (My favorite part is the music of the spheres--the music that space made, a strange soft music, deep and weird, like millions of voices singing together.)

The Iron Giant came to the top of a cliff one night, no one knows how or from where he had come. The wind sang through his iron fingers, and his great iron head, shaped like a dustbin but big as a bedroom, slowly turned right, then slowly turned left. Down the cliff he fell, his iron legs, arms and ears breaking loose and falling off as he went. The pieces scattered, crashed, bumped, clanged down onto the rocky beach far below, where the sound of the sea chewed away at it, and the pieces of the Iron Giant lay scattered far and wide, silent and unmoving.

See what I mean? When the Giant was discovered after biting a tractor in two, the farmers whose equipment he had ruined dug a deep enormous hole, a stupendous hole on the side of which they put a rusty old truck to attract him. Hogarth lured the Giant there, and when he finally came to the trap, the farmers filled it in on top of him and let out a great cheer. Of course, the Giant escaped, and Hogarth (who felt guilty) found a home for him in the local scrap yard, where he could eat tractors to his heart's content.

Then arrived from Space a terribly black, terribly scaly, terribly knobbly, terribly horned, terribly hairy, terribly clawed, terribly fanged creature with vast indescribably terrible eyes, each one as big as Switzerland. It landed in Australia, where it covered the whole continent, and all the armies of the world decided to fight this space-bat-angle-dragon, who demanded live creatures as food. They declared war and lost. It was Hogarth's idea to call upon the Iron Giant for help.

I won't tell you how the story ended. But the important point, for grown-ups at least, is that in creating his 1968 Cold War space-bat-angle-dragon, the erstwhile pacifist poet Hughes also created a vision of evil incarnate--the kind of evil that wishes to engulf the entire world, that cannot be reasoned with, cannot be pacified and must be fought. Ironic, isn't it? Alyssa A. Lappen

Summary of The Iron Giant

Ted Hughes, poet laureate of England, first wrote this compelling tall tale in 1968. Clearly, the need for its message of peace has not diminished in the decades since. Simple, repetitive sentences carry the mesmerizing spirit of traditional fairy tales. And Andrew Davidson's black-and-white illustrations, with their menacing air and timeless appeal, drive the point home in vivid style. (Ages 8 and older) --Emilie Coulter

Literature Books

• Books > Subjects > Children's Books
• Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy & Magic