She was small, but sometimes small things could do what greater creatures could not.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Suzanne Wilson, who began editing Little Fur with me; Nan McNab, who stepped into the breach to finish it so beautifully; and Janet Raunjak, who was so sweetly there every step of the way.
I would also like to offer heartfelt thanks to the artists who helped this decided non-artist: my partner, Jan; my brother, Ken; Peter Cross; Ann James; and most of all, Jirí Tibor Novák, whose own art so inspires me, and who gave so generously of time, technical advice and even equipment. Without these real artists, I would never have managed to put Little Fur onto the page. I also want to thank Marina Messiha, who so beautifully art-directed this book.
Additionally, I want to thank all of the above and others—fellow writers, friends and, in the case of Tibby, children of friends—who so ably defended Little Fur from my anxieties and despair.
And, as ever, I must thank the cafés and their generous owners and staff, who put up with me sitting for hours over coffee, working. I wrote Little Fur in Cafe 145, The Sea Grape and The Bay Leaf, all in Apollo Bay, and in the Contemporary Art Museum café in Prague.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isobelle Carmody began the first of her highly acclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles while she was still in high school, and worked on it while completing a bachelor of arts and then a journalism cadetship. The series and her short stories have established her at the forefront of fantasy writing in Australia.
She has written many award-winning short stories and books for young people. The Gathering was a joint winner of the 1993 CBC Book of the Year Award and the 1994 Children’s Peace Literature Award. Billy Thunder and the Night Gate (published as Night Gate in the United States) was short-listed for the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature in the 2001 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
Isobelle divides her time between her homes in Australia and the Czech Republic.
ALSO BY ISOBELLE CARMODY
Night Gate
Winter Door
The Obernewtyn Chronicles
Obernewtyn
The Farseekers
Ashling
The Keeping Place
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Isobelle Carmody
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Australia as The Legend of Little Fur by Penguin Books Australia, Camberwell, in 2005.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carmody, Isobelle.
[Legend of Little Fur]
Little Fur : the legend begins / Isobelle Carmody. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
Originally published in Australia in 2005 under the title: The legend of Little Fur.
SUMMARY: When half-elf, half-troll Little Fur learns that servants of the troll king aim to destroy her beloved trees, she embarks on an ambitious and dangerous journey into the human world in hopes of saving not only the wilderness she calls home, but the very earth spirit itself.
[1. Elves—Fiction. 2. Voyages and travels—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Trees—Fiction. 5. Ecology—Fiction. 6. Fantasy.] I. Title. II. Title: Legend begins.
PZ7.C2176Lit 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005034547
eISBN: 978-0-375-84922-0
v3.0
The Legend Begins Page 9