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Summary: What a fabulous read!
Review: I was completely absorbed in Corinna's terrifying adventures as "folk keeper" and in figuring out the mystery of her background. What an unusual heroine! What a great setting! What an intriguing premise! What an astounding PLOT! I don't want to spoil the twists and turns for you, but trust me: this book is a flat-out great read.
Rating:
Summary: What a fabulous read!
Review: I was completely absorbed in Corinna's terrifying adventures as "folk keeper" and in figuring out the mystery of her background. What an unusual heroine! What a great setting! What an intriguing premise! What an astounding PLOT! I don't want to spoil the twists and turns for you, but trust me: this book is a flat-out great read.
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Summary: Stunningly beautiful, yet dark...
Review: I'm guessing it will become a classic if enough people discover it. Haunting, dark...the best book I've read this year. Hints of The Secret Garden and Wuthering Heights. I'm using it for a book discussion group--themes: gender, identity, trust... A dark retelling of a fairy tale.
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Summary: The Folk Keeper
Review: If you like action, adventure, mysterious people and a little romance on the side you will love this novel. It is so exciting you can't put it down.
Corinna is a young girl who pretends to be a boy so she can be a Folk Keeper. Corinna (a.k.a Corin) doesn't like other people. She mostly stays down in her deep, dark cellar keeping all her secrets to herself. Soon a dying old man asks her to be his Folk Keeper and move away from the orphanage. She decides to go to Marblehaugh Park and watch these ravenous Folk. Here we see her vengence, soft side, weaknesses, and loves.
This book is a must read and will keep you wondering until the very end.
Rating:
Summary: The Folk Keeper
Review: If you like action, adventure, mysterious people and a little romance on the side you will love this novel. It is so exciting you can't put it down.
Corinna is a young girl who pretends to be a boy so she can be a Folk Keeper. Corinna (a.k.a Corin) doesn't like other people. She mostly stays down in her deep, dark cellar keeping all her secrets to herself. Soon a dying old man asks her to be his Folk Keeper and move away from the orphanage. She decides to go to Marblehaugh Park and watch these ravenous Folk. Here we see her vengence, soft side, weaknesses, and loves.
This book is a must read and will keep you wondering until the very end.
Rating: 
Summary: I was transported to another world
Review: Ms. Billingsley creates a world both very real and also fantastical in her tale of Corinna, The Folk Keeper. Her characters ring true, as does her setting, for this 'otherworldly' tale. Good read.
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Summary: Inventive Folklore
Review: My daughter and I both read this book and loved it. She is eleven and I am forty-four and we both found the book interesting and enjoyable. Neither one of us could put it down!
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Summary: A Significant Juvenile Fantasy Novel of the Decade!
Review: Surely one of the most significant juvenile fantasy novels of the decade, THE FOLK KEEPER is a brilliant novel woven of intricate plot, masterful characterization, and deliciously poetic language. The compelling story of Corinna, a folk keeper who earns her place in society by tending the dangerous and ravenous folk of the underworld, is told in diary format, a device that heightens the immediacy of her search for self as she uncovers her true nature.This is an essential purchase and a must read!
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Summary: The Folk Keeper
Review: The Folk Keeper has got to be one of the most magical books I have ever read. I could never put it down! I love how the book relates to the Kelpies of Celtic Mythology and the old English Myth about seal women. The characters are vivid and likeable (or dislikeable, depended on who you are talking about) and I could always picture them, whatever they were doing. This is a great book and I recommend any body to read it.
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Summary: Dark, poetical story with strong characters!! A great read!
Review: The Folk Keeper Submitted 6/15/01 Corinna Stonewall is a Folk Keeper. That is, in the strange and beautiful world of Ms. Billingsley's book, it is her job to lurk in the dark, cavernous underground Cellar distracting and pacifying the hideous Folk, creatures described by another Keeper as "mostly wet mouth and teeth." The Folk are constantly angry and ravenous-- never a good combination-- and they have the power to ruin crops, spoil milk, rot eggs and meat and cause animals to sicken and die. Any estate or village, therefore, desperately needs their Folk Keeper, and Corinna knows this well. Whereas anywhere else in the village she would merely be a slave or laborer, as Folk Keeper she has power and she knows it: "here in the Cellar, I control the Folk. Here, I'm queen of the world." Perhaps like all queens, Corinna has secrets, not the least of which is that she is pretending to be a boy, for no female can be Folk Keeper. As Corin the Keeper of the Folk, she can spend long hours away from people, which allows her to keep her other secrets well hidden. Secrets like how she is never cold, how she always knows the exact time, as if a clock were running through her veins, and how her hair grows two inches every night as she sleeps. Some of these secrets are threatened when old, dying Lord Merton comes to her, and fetches her away to his vast estate where the lure of the sea and the power of controlling a great many more Folk tempts Corinna to leave her small village. Once there, Corinna must contend with Folk that are far more fierce than those she's used to, a young man named Finian whom she forms a fast but tenuous friendship, and the enigmatic, possibly dangerous Sir Edward, who may be more than he appears. Told in the form of a diary, the reader follows Corinna through her early stages of a Folk Keeper and how she managed to hide her secrets, to the surprising end where she discovers her true heritage and everything falls into place. Corinna's language is poetic and beautiful, describing everything around her in languid eloquence. Describing a party she attends on Midsummer's Eve, she writes in her journal: "A footman handed me a glass. Tiny lines of bubbles streamed through the pale liquid. The fiddle cried out in a language that everyone but I understood. Like pieces of a kaleidoscope, the ladies and gentlemen fell into patterns of color on the Ballroom floor." Ms. Billingsley is the author of "Well Wished", a title that won Best Book of the Year by School Library Journal. In "The Folk Keeper", her second work, she has created a beautiful world and fine character in Corinna, one who is immediately likeable in spite of her rough exterior-- perhaps even BECAUSE of it. As female characters go, Corinna is brave and inventive despite all of her stubbornness. She is a strong character in an age where too many female leads are still portrayed as helpless shrinking violets. As noted, the writing style of "Folk Keeper" is somewhere between prose and poetry--what a friend of mine calls "High English" of the almost Shakespearian sort. Because very few people speak in High English (especially teens & young adults for whom this book is geared toward), some readers-- especially those who are still not masterful at reading yet-- may miss out on the subtleties of the text or become confused. Still, it is a brilliant work and highly recommended. For those students or readers who find the eloquence of the book difficult, it is available in an unabridged audio format with a masterful performance by Ms. Marian Tomas Griffin. I am a reading teacher and use both audio and text with my upper-grade students when we read this book. Both formats come highly recommended!!
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