Where is the neverending story book

Michael worked as an actor, film reviewer and political sketch writer and his first children's book was published in He was criticised for filling children's heads with escapist, fantasy stories instead of confronting them with the social realism that was believed in at the time. The attacks hurt him and he moved to Rome to live in He wrote 30 books, not all were translated into English.

His most successful titles in the UK are Momo and The Neverending Story, both of which were made into successful films. Search books and authors. View all retailers. A Puffin Book - stories that last a lifetime Small and insignificant Bastian Balthazar Bux is nobody's idea of a hero, least of all his own. About the author Michael Ende Michael Ende was post-war Germany's most successful writer of children's books. Also by Michael Ende.

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About The Neverending Story Read the book that inspired the classic coming-of-age film! Product Details. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Philip Pullman. Adam Gidwitz. The Princess and the Goblin. George MacDonald. Five Children and It. Roger Lancelyn Green.

Eiko Kadono. John F. The People of Sparks. Jeanne DuPrau. His Dark Materials: Serpentine. The Apothecary. The Warden and the Wolf King. Andrew Peterson. His Dark Materials Omnibus. The Grimm Conclusion. Myths of the Norsemen. The Barren Grounds.

David A. But to me, there is a deeper message. But the wishes come at a dreadful price, which at first he fails to understand. Every time he makes a wish, he forgets something about the real world. What does this mean? I see people who don't like it, indeed who are indignant that die kindliche Kaiserin is playing Bastian such a mean trick. Why does she give him this dangerous thing that nearly destroys him? But die kindliche Kaiserin, we are told many times, is neither good nor evil.

She cares for everyone equally, the good ones and the evil ones alike, and does not distinguish them. She is not a loving God, she is much more an impersonal force of nature.

To me, Ende's story dramatises the thesis at the heart of a more recent book, Harari's Sapiens. Harari argues that the thing which makes human beings unique is that we can invent stories and treat them as if they were real; by doing so, they become real.

As he says, religion and empires and money are just stories, but we often forget that, because they are such an important part of our lives. Many other things are stories too: scientific theories, political ideologies, ethical systems.

To call them stories makes them seem less important, but it is a mistake to think that. They shape our entire world, and we would be lost without them. Well: I think the message of Die unendliche Geschichte is very simple, in fact so simple that it's easy to miss it.

We can be involved with that world in two ways. Then at the mid-point of the book, he crosses over. From being a reader, he becomes a writer. He meets die kindliche Kaiserin and starts constructing the story himself. Once he is the author, Bastian is all-powerful, and there is nothing strange about this. An author does indeed have absolute power over the story he is creating. But essential as they are to us, it is so easy to start forgetting that the story-worlds we create are not the real world.

The more we work with our story-worlds, the more we forget the real world, and in the end all we can see is the story-world. When we knowingly cross over from the real world into the story-world, we can gain greatly from the experience. As Gmork says, they make people believe things that are not true, and fear things that are not dangerous, and hate people who wish them no ill. It was very clever of him to turn this experience into something that could almost be mistaken for a children's book. View all 21 comments.

Feb 10, Calista rated it liked it Shelves: genre-fantasy , bage-middle-grade , want-to-own , genre-travel , myth-folktale-fable , award-various , sub-cities , , classic.

This is almost like 2 books wrapped in one story. I was torn. The first half of the book is great and I want to give that 4 stars and the last half is rough and I want to give that 2 stars, so I meet in the middle. If, like me, you have seen the movie 'the Neverending Story' as a child then this story will be different to you than someone who hasn't. The 1st half of the story is the movie. It sticks to the plot pretty faithfully. Then, the movie ends with Bastian making a wish and he's back in th This is almost like 2 books wrapped in one story.

Then, the movie ends with Bastian making a wish and he's back in the real world. The movie gives us a real ending. This is the ending, it feels like the ending. Well, my fellow fantasy lovers, the book continues on. There isn't a whole lot of plot, it's just wish fulfillment. It's was everything I could do to finish this story and not just put it down. It was horrible and it bugged me to death. I did not like the end. Also, the movie was smart and changed the name of the book and the world to Fantasia which sounds so much better than Fantastica, which is horrible to read over and over.

I don't like that translation. If you read this, my advice is to stop where the movie stops and be happy with that ending. Here's what else happens. The way this is set up, the child-like empress is, after all this we find, a wicked child meant on caging children from our real world in Fantastica. She hands the child the amulet, this brave child that stepped into the book and gave her a new name.

She tells the believing child to go make all the wishes they want and make Fantastica live again. Here's what she doesn't tell these poor victims. They can only see her once, they can only make so many wishes, and, most importantly, each wish removes their memories of their world from them. What happens is, they forget who they are and start to power trip.

If they take over the empresses thrown, they lose all their power. They have to make wishes to get out and if they don't figure all this out soon enough, the completely forget who they are and then they can't leave. It gets worse. Even if they do figure out how to get all this done, Bastian gets there with his last wish and doesn't remember who he is. Once he does open the gate, then he can't go through until he finishes all the stories he started in the land.

I mean, it's devious stuff. I started out loving this story and after all the crap in the last part, I don't really like this too much.

The child-like empress is supposed to be all good, but this is a vicious trap that humans fall into. She is wicked. Bastian goes to a town in Fantastica that is filled with humans and children from our world that either tried taking the throne or they lost their memories after wishing too much.

There are hundreds of thousands of people there. These people will never return to the real world and it's not like they are having fun either in Fantastica, no. They are basically mindless idiots. They have no clue who they are and are treated like children.

So, we have the wicked little empress luring unsuspecting children to her realm and then we have to watch Bastian go from this shy little boy, to his bully and pompous conqueror on a horrible power trip.

He turns on his friends and sides with the evil people and does his best to take the throne of Fantastica. I hated this last half. It's horrible. I adore the 1st half. It's wonderful and magical and the movie does an excellent job of adapting it. The movie knew when to stop and the author didn't. His climax is at the end and then there is a whole other half of the book that we don't need.

It's terrible. There's supposed to be some lesson in this, but it doesn't work, in my opinion. Oh, chicken wing-ding of high fructose corn syrup please save us from this horrible mess.

I have to say, skip the book and watch the movie. The ending just made me so mad. I wanted to love this and the ending ruined it. You know, I have to take a star. I was going to give this 3 stars and now I'm ending up after all this giving it 2 stars because the ending just ruined the book.

I would love to hear from others who didn't watch the movie what they thought of the story. Maybe, my love of the movie is in the way of my opinion, but I don't think so. The climax was really in the middle of the story and then it kept going. I would love to know thoughts from people who only read the book why they loved it. My children are currently listening to a never-ending audiobook of this all time children's favourite of mine, and I find myself secretly spying on them, listening to bits and pieces of the story, always knowing exactly where they are at the moment, after so many rereadings!

I don't think I ever pass an antique shop without thinking of this book for at least a fraction of a second, it is s My children are currently listening to a never-ending audiobook of this all time children's favourite of mine, and I find myself secretly spying on them, listening to bits and pieces of the story, always knowing exactly where they are at the moment, after so many rereadings!

I don't think I ever pass an antique shop without thinking of this book for at least a fraction of a second, it is so deeply engraved in my heart and mind. Who has never dreamt of being a castaway in the school attic, with some food, some light, and a book that -literally - soaks you in? I still hear the loud cry when Bastian thinks he sees himself in the mirror that Atreju stares into. And I still hear him yell the name of the Empress: "Mondenkind", in German, probably Moonchild in English, in order to save that beautiful fantasy world from the big, dark nothing that is eating it as a result of children losing interest in storytelling.

I read the book in German as a child and saw the movie later - and I was always annoyed by the fact that it ends halfway through! Bastian's adventures and his slow path to wisdom haven't even started yet at the end of the movie. Therefore I read it aloud to my children before letting them watch the movie, and I discovered so many layers in it that had escaped me as a child, and I enjoyed it even more.

Especially Bastian's interpretation of the Auryn inscription "Tu was du willst", in German - "Do what you want to do" has been helpful to me ever since. Bastian painfully learns the hard way that it is not about spontaneously following your own whims, but about reflecting on what your true wishes are.

That makes total sense to me, and I try to consult my invisible Auryn medallion whenever I have to make important decisions!

Now that my children are embarking on their second reading hearing of the story, they start talking about how the plot changes in their minds as they develop a more mature taste in literature. I find that incredibly valuable, and here I am myself, revisiting this childhood love again, and finding pleasure in writing about it. Apart from Astrid Lindgren, Michael Ende must be my favourite children's book author, and I like him just as much now as when I was little and dreamt of being locked into the school attic with a book that never ends and that has a place for me and the stories I want to tell myself!

View all 11 comments. Nov 14, Eric Allen rated it it was ok. When I was six or seven, the Neverending Story came out, and it was one of the most awesome movies I had ever seen in my life. It was a movie that wasn't afraid to scare the everliving shit out of children, and I loved it for that. Even today, many, many years later, it is still an old favorite that I remember fondly and hope, one day, to scare the everliving shit out of my own children with.

The book, on the other hand, is something of a mess. First of all, many people were not aware that it even existed. Fewer people still realize that the extremely terrible Neverending Story II movie was actually part of the book.

Think on that for a minute and tell me your childhood isn't curled up in a little ball in the closet crying. The book was originally written in German, brought to you on the screen by a German director and crew, and only after the movie was so popular did the book get translated into a few more languages. The plot of The Neverending Story needs no summarizing for most people.

It's a very basic telling of the hero's journey story archetype. What makes it so awesome and memorable, of course, is the world in which it takes place, and the fact that the villain was something more abstract than an actual, tangible foe that can be fought and defeated. The second half of the book focuses on the child Bastion, who is pulled into the book after giving the Childlike Empress her new name, which, by the way, people have been asking for years, because that kid is completely unintelligible in the movie.

Her name is Moon Child. However, I believe that, for whatever reason, the name was translated literally, rather than left in the original German.

Bastion must make his way back to the real world by making wishes, but for each wish he makes, he loses precious memories from his life. And it is only through the help of his friends Atreiyu and Falkor that he is able to return at all.

The Good? The first half of the book is excellent. I absolutely love it. The movie stays extremely faithful to the source material. The world is imaginative, the hero is a bit of a blank slate, but likeable all the same, and a lot of the things that he goes through on his quest serve a dual purpose, to both be entertaining, and thought provoking. The use of an abstract concept, the Nothing, as the villain is where I think this part of the book really shines.

It's very hard to give a concept weight as a character, but the author did an extraordinary job of bringing it, and all of the horror surrounding it, to life. The Bad? Where this book really falls apart is in the second half. You remember how excited you were to see Neverending Story II when it came out?

I know I was. And boy was I disappointed. Well, the second half of the book is pretty much the same. They changed the story drastically to make it easier to make a movie out of it, because there really isn't much in the way of purpose or direction in it. There isn't a real goal, or reason for anything to be happening. Bastion just wanders around, makes wishes, and pretty much accidentally finds his way home again. This boring stretch of nothing happening is compounded by two things.

The first is that the first half of the book is so clever, and awesome, and enjoyable, and when you get to the second half it's like running headlong into a brick wall. All of the awesome world, the awesome supporting characters, and even the hero of the story are simply gone, and you're left with only Bastion. And that leads in to the second thing. Bastion is an extraordinarily unlikeable character.

And after Atreiyu, who is not exactly the most interesting character, true, but a hell of a lot more likeable than Bastion, you feel the contrast all the more. When you actively dislike the person that a story is all about, the story itself is not enjoyable. What creates such things as tension, and drama, are emotional attachments to the characters. If you don't like the character, and don't care whether he succeeds or not, any story woven around him is, inevitably going to be terrible as well.

And that is exactly what is wrong with the second half of the book. Bastion is so unlikeable as a character, that I just couldn't have cared less what he was doing, or why, and I certainly didn't care if he was going to succeed or not. You go from a relatively enjoyable protagonist in the first half, to someone who literally has not one single redeeming quality in him as the protagonist in the second half.

The fact that there is no readily defined plot for him to participate in makes it even worse, because when there is no real storyline, all of the entertainment value in a story rests wholly upon the characters. The second half of this book is about a terrible, unlikeable character, doing basically nothing but wandering around the world and showing how terrible and unlikeable a character he is.

Additionally, this book is not very well written. I'm going to give the author the benefit of the doubt and say that it's probably the translator being unable to convey the original German wording properly into English, and all of the little nuances of prose that make a well written book were lost in translation. But there is probably one thing that was definitely in the original German.

The author keeps bringing up what sounds like a really awesome tangent to the story, and then saying, "But that's a different story and will not be spoken of here. Oh my GOD is this annoying. He literally does it like forty times over the course of the book. It was cute once or twice, but it just gets more and more annoying with every time it happens.

In conclusion, though The Neverending Story movie will always have a special place in my heart, the book it was based on is better left forgotten.

I believe that a lot was lost in translation, when this book was adapted to English, but that can only account for so much. The first half of the book is very enjoyable, with a few odd quirks of writing that I found to be annoying, most of which probably resulted from English not being the original language that the book was written in.

The second half of the book is terrible, following a thoroughly unlikeable character as he does absolutely nothing but display what an arrogant douchebag that he is for all the world to see. I do not recommend picking this book up, unfortunately. And if you do, I highly recommend that you only read the first half.

The bad more than outweighs the good. Stick to the movie, and remember all the great times you had with it as a child. It's one of the few rare cases of the movie actually being better than the book.

The movie, at least, knew exactly when to shut up, come to a conclusion, and wrap things up with a tidy little bow. I wish I could say the same for the book, but I can't. It gets two stars, which is probably one more than it deserves, but hey, nostalgia is a powerful thing.

Check out my other reviews. View all 22 comments. Jul 12, Penny rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Everyone. Shelves: favorites , tv , classics , k-read-kids , reviewed , likereviews. The Neverending Story is a splendid and brilliant story, full of adventure, magic, strength, perseverance, loyalty, self-improvement and self-fulfillment. I have really great memories of reading this book. I think I was 13 or so, maybe less I am not sure; but I remember I read it on a summer after summer-camp.

It was my first "big fat" book and I became soooo obsessed with it that I couldn't stop reading. That summer I was on vacation with my parents in our usual campsite and I would sit outside our caravan, below a three in a deck chair for hours reading and reading, and completely ignoring all my friends who looked at me as if I were a crazy person for reading during holiday time.

I was utterly absorbed by it. Looking back, this book might have been the culprit of me falling in love with books, up until that time I had always liked and enjoyed reading, but I believe it was that summer, with The Neverending Story that I truly fell in love with reading.

Thus, it will always be a special book for me. In my opinion The Neverending Story is meant to be read at a specific moment of time, it should be read at a young age so you can still get into the daydreaming and enchanting spirit the whole book is surrounded by. Otherwise you can outgrow this fantastic story and that could make it lose all its wondrous magic.

Still, I recommend this book to everyone, after all just how many times have we ever wished to enter a book just like Bastian did! I know I always want to and I always will. There were too many characters and creatures, and each one only lasts for about 2 pages before we are moving onto the next thing.

View all 9 comments. Oct 31, Belinda rated it it was amazing Shelves: fantasy-wensenlijstje. Favoriet book of all times.

Keep reading it myself but also to the childeren of the neighbours. Need a new copy. This one is almost falling apart. View all 4 comments. Mar 30, Sophia Triad rated it it was amazing Shelves: 4fantasy-lovestories , favorites , children.

This is one of the best books I have read when I was a kid. I have read it multiple times and I was extremely disappointed with the movie adaptation. I truly believe that this story has inspired me and made me love Fantacy books so much later on as an adult. If my remember correctly my godfather gave it to me as a Christmas present together with "Comet in Moominland" by Tove Jansson.

The best combination! Although it is more than 25 years since I last read it, I still remember scenes of the story This is one of the best books I have read when I was a kid. Although it is more than 25 years since I last read it, I still remember scenes of the story, dialogues, lonely Bastian, Arteiyu and Fantastica.

Of course when I read it for first time, it was the Greek translation of the book. Now I have a daughter who is six years old and she loves fairytales, dragons, princesses and magic. She also adores stories that they never end.

When they eventually do end, she finds ways to postpone the ending and to expand the story. She has a vivid imagination this kid : So it is Christmas holidays, school holidays and this is the perfect opportunity to start a neverending story with her in english this time.

No school tomorrow. No need to sleep early. And so far she cannot have enough! View all 24 comments. I came across Bradley's review of "The Neverending Story" a few days ago, and it brought back a lot of memories. I'm sure I'm not the only Goodreader who related to the story of an awkward child who finds comfort and reprieve from the bullying he endures at school and the cold father who waits for him at home between the pages on a book. I remember watching the movie and thinking that Coreander's bookshop was the most beautiful place I had ever seen: to this day, whenever I step into a crammed, I came across Bradley's review of "The Neverending Story" a few days ago, and it brought back a lot of memories.

I remember watching the movie and thinking that Coreander's bookshop was the most beautiful place I had ever seen: to this day, whenever I step into a crammed, dusty little bookshop, I get that excited flutter in my stomach that I got when I first saw those precarious-looking piles of books, each one a whole new world to explore.

A whole new world that wasn't the crappy one I woke up in. But those that do are priceless treasures, and now more than ever, they can be a great source of comfort and welcome distraction from the incredibly fucked up reality we have to deal with.

Bastian Balthazar Bux is a lonely, chubby little boy. Other kids pick on him, and his recently widowed father is so lost in his grief that he doesn't see his son's misery and need for attention.