Guardians of Ga'Hoole 15 - The War of the Ember

affection.
    Soren
    Guardian Among Guardians

Acknowledgments
    As in previous Guardians of Ga’Hoole books, I have taken much inspiration from history. In Chapter 15 the speech given by the H’ryth is based on one given by Winston Churchill in 1940 in the House of Commons during World War II.
    The final battle in the War of the Ember is modeled after the famous battle of Thermopylae in the year 480 B.C., where the Spartan soldiers at a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece stood three hundred strong against the invading Persian army who outnumbered them many times over. When Nyra warns Coryn that his strategy will not work without the sun and Coryn replies, “Then we shall fight you in the shade,” these are the same words that the warrior Dienekes replied to the threat delivered by the Persian king Xerxes as reported by Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian. Similarly in the epilogue of The War of The Ember when Otulissa begins to write the history of this great battle, one of the sentences in the last paragraph is an adaptation of the words of the fifth-century Greek lyric poet Simonides, words that can be found today onthe memorial epitaph at the site of the battle of Thermopylae.
    Being a writer is not really as lonely a job as many people might think. In the end, writing a book is truly a collaboration. I have acknowledged history and then people such as Winston Churchill, whose use of language I find profoundly moving. I have recognized my readers, who through their enthusiasm have sustained and stirred me to keeping writing more in this series. And now I must speak briefly of my four muses.
    Ann Reit loved my idea for the Guardians of Ga’Hoole and is responsible for bringing it to the attention of the people at Scholastic who were so important in giving it the great launch.
    Joy Peskin edited the first five books. I am so grateful to her for her unmitigated optimism when I often faced what I thought were insurmountable problems as we sought to establish an overall narrative arc for these first books.
    Maria Weisbin, who edited the last ten books, has the most extraordinary editorial eye I have ever encountered in my thirty years of writing. Her ear for language, her sense of plot and pacing is simply unmatched. She isa woman of profound sensibilities, and her contribution to these books is beyond measure.
    And finally there was, and is, the late Craig Walker, who was truly my Ezylryb. May he be ever happy in glaumora.

THE G UARDIANS of G A ’H OOLE
    Book One: The Capture
    Book Two: The Journey
    Book Three: The Rescue
    Book Four: The Siege
    Book Five: The Shattering
    Book Six: The Burning
    Book Seven: The Hatchling
    Book Eight: The Outcast
    Book Nine: The First Collier
    Book Ten: The Coming of Hoole
    Book Eleven: To Be a King
    Book Twelve: The Golden Tree
    Book Thirteen: The River of Wind
    Book Fourteen: Exile
    Book Fifteen: The War of the Ember
    A Guide Book to the Great Tree
    Lost Tales of Ga’Hoole

Copyright
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    Text copyright © 2008 by Kathryn Lasky
    Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Scholastic Inc.
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    E-ISBN: 978-0-545-28346-5
    First printing, November 2008
    Cover art by Richard Cowdrey
    Cover design by Steve Scott