The Wee Free Men

When you have an author as good as Terry Pratchett writing for children, you expect that the result will be a novel of great invention, assured comic timing and a generally all-round highly readable fantasy tour de force. Readers of The Wee Free Men will not be disappointed. After winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal award for his previous story of Discworld for younger readers, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Pratchett has followed up with another irresistibly entertaining adventure.

Miss Perspicacia Tick, a witch of some renown, is worried about a ripple in the walls of the universe--probably another world making contact. Which is not good. This errant activity is centred on some chalk country--where traditionally good witches simply do not grow well. Fortunately, Miss Tiffany Aching of Home Farm on The Chalk, nine years old, misunderstood and yearning for excitement, wants to be a witch and has just proved herself to be of great potential by whacking a big Green Monster from the river with a huge frying pan while using her annoying younger brother as bait. Miss Tick is impressed. So, after travelling to the chalky downs at once and dispensing some stop gap advice to Tiffany about holding the fort until she gets back with more help, Miss Tick is off.

Any hesitation Tiffany may have had about the seriousness of the situation expires when the Queen of the fairies kidnaps her younger brother. With the help of a talking frog, loaned by Miss Tick, and an army of thieving, warmongering, nippy, boozy wee free men called the Nac Mac Feegle (who used to work for the Queen but rebelled), Tiffany sets off rescue her kin.

There's humour at every turn, and the situations that follow are both wonderfully dramatic and preposterously unreal. Pratchett really is the master of his genre and it's difficult to imagine a more entertaining read. (Age 10 and over) --John McLay

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A great read for children and adults alike - Rated
Although supposedly a book for younger audiences, the Wee Free Men would be enjoyable for any Discworld fan no-matter what their age. The book follows Tiffany Aching, a young farmgirl who must deal with an invasion of nightmare creatures, the disappearance of her younger brother and her own burgeoning power. All she has to help her is a frying pan, a book on the Diseases of the Sheep and the Wee Free Men, tough and drunken pictsies who enjoy a good fight.

Although the book does get off to something of a bad start it does pick up as you read and it turns into a greatly entertaining story. Terry Pratchett is a brilliant righter and this book is a great exposition of his strengths being funny, thoughtful and inventive all at the same time. The book does have the feel of both Alice in Wonderland and the David Bowie film Labyrinth but this is only a background and the book does a great job of forging a path of its own. Anyone interested in the Discworld would love this book and it goes without saying that this would be a great entry level book for younger readers.

If nothing can make you smile at the moment- read this book! - Rated
This book will make you smile....and laugh....it's great! It's got everything you could wish for in a book :- Hilarious swearin' stealin' fightin' heroic, tiny blue men - nasty rotten 'boo' creating baddies - a lovely, brave, imperfect, modest heroine in Tiffany, and, best of all, 'shocked' sheep being carried backwards at great speed......imagery I defy you not to find funny.
Terry Pratchett has a brilliant way of bringing a little bit of magic into everyone's life.
Read this book, it's a great adventure :-)

This is a Childerens book? - Rated
After reading this book the first time, I found it to be a sweet and quircky book inteneded for childeren.

I read it a second time and almost had to take a step back, literally.

This book is obviously intended for childeren, but some of the concepts are so very deep (dream within dreams within dreams) or so very complicated that you almost need a child-like simplicity to work them out (literal mindedness helps)

I feel that this book has alot to offer for both childeren and adults.
Read it to your little ones, and you will both get the benifit.

Children's novel - Rated
This is a good children's book. I give a 3 star rating regarding it's enjoyability as an adult reading this. There were a few instances in this book where the storyline felt like re-hashing of another story I'd read somewhere else.

smallerthanbigjockbutbiggerthanweejockjock - Rated
I really enjoyed this book. I can't remember where I was, but I first read it on holiday. One thing I do remember is reading out bits to my brother. The Nac-Mac-Feegle are some of the most origonal and hilarious characters I have met, stuff J.K.R's coppied creatures, the brawling, theiving, loyal, drunk, rowdy, headbutting, drunk, impossible to argue with, feegles, who would headbutt you if you left them a saucer of milk are a completely different take on faries. And a welcome one. They aren't exactly stupid, they just think that discworld, with it's pubs, creatures to fight and stuff to steal, is heaven and therefore are not afraid of 'dying' which is pretty impossible anyway.