The Neverending Story
These are my notes and summary based on the book instead of the movie because the book was written right before I was born whereas the movie was made right after. I didn’t know this was an actual book outside of the movie until (now as in within these last few months when I started listing all this stuff on this journal) now so before I get my facts messed up on things that might have happened in the movie that didn’t happen in the book, I’m going to go ahead and read the book.
The Neverending Story is the English translation of a German book called, “Die unendliche Geschichte.”
It was published in German in 1979 with the English translation published in 1983. It was written by Michael Ende. It was published in German by K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stutgart. It was published in English by Doubleday & Company. Inc. It was published by Penguin books in 1984. The version I’m reading now was published by Dutton’s Children’s Books, a division of Penguin books, published in 1997.
Contents
Prologue
1: Fantastica in Danger
2: Atreyu’s Mission
3: Morla the Aged One
4: Ygramul the Many
5: The Gnomics
6: The Three Magic Gates
7: The Voice of Silence
8: The Wind Giants
9: Spook City
10: The Flight to the Ivory Tower
11: The Childlike Empress
12: The Old Man of Wandering Mountain
13: Perilin, the Night Forest
14: The Desert of Colors
15: Grograman, the Many-Colored Death
16: The Silver City of Amarganth
17: A Dragon for Hero Hynreck
18: The Acharis
19: The Traveling Companions
20: The Seeing Hand
21: The Star Cloister
22: The Battle for the Ivory Tower
23: The City of the Old Emperor’s
24: Dame Eyola
25: The Picture Mine
26: The Water of Life
Prologue Summary:
Bastian, a boy described as fat, lost his mom and is bullied by kids. He’s in a store and sees a book with a metal snake emblem. He steals the book and runs off to his school’s attic with some props, an owl, a golden eagle, a fox and a skeleton. He reads the book, sitting “Indian Style,” and enters a magical world called Fantastica.
Fantastica in Danger:
It starts off by describing main characters from Fantastica’s Howling Forest, they all carry white flags.
– Will-O-The-Wisp named Blubb.
– Rock chewer named Pyornkrachzark, eats rocks and rides a bike made of rock and is ten foot tall. Pyornkrachzark is from a mountain with holes that looks like Swiss Cheese. His family is known as the Cheesiewheezies.
– Tiny person named Gluckuk, wears a red hat and rides a Snail
– Night-Hob named Vooshvazool that rides a Bat.
These character’s ran into each other and Blubb, the Will-O-The-Wisp, explains that’s there’s a void, emptiness, nothingness that made Lake Foamingbroth and Foggle the Father of Frogs disappear from Blubb’s homeland in Moldymoor. The nothing void is spreading and making everything disappear. Blubb is off to see someone called the Childlike Emperess for help. The other characters say the same thing happened to their homeland and they’re all going to see the Childlike Emperess for help also.
They all take off to the Ivory Tower where the Childlike Empress is at and are then told that she is ill and it’s probably caused by the nothing that is taking over the land. – End of Chapter
Atreyu’s Mission:
The empress is sick, and details the Fantastica Palace and all the people that have tried to cure her, dwarfs, fairies, sprites, snakes, witches, vampires and ghosts. The empress ruled over all over Fantastica and her death meant the end of them all and her death meant the end of Fantastica.
The story switches between detailing the Fantastican Empresses’ illness and Bastion’s mom’s final moments in a hospital where she was sick before her death.
The story switches between the story Bastion is reading and back to recounting things in Bastion’s life outside of the book.
Back in Fantastica the creatures trying to cure the Empress see a centaur walk in called Cairon, with a medallion of two snakes, the same emblem that’s on the book Bastion’s reading. The medallion is called Auryn, and they need to get the Auryn to someone called Atreyu to find a cure. The Childlike Empress specifically asked for Atreyu to find a cure.
Atreyu walks into the palace, a hunter that uses bows and arrows, in a purple-red cape, with blue-black hair, in a buffalo leather outfit, that can track down someone they think can cure the Empress.
The Auryn medallion will give Atreyu great power and protect him on his quest.
Atreyu gets on his horse Artax and leaves on his mission.
The story describes the nothing that is taking over Fantastica turning into a monster, thing of some sort that picked up on Atreyu’s scent and takes off after him.