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Key plot points

  1. The storyline was that all statues come to life and move around although humans don't know this.
  2. The human statues are involved in a long running on-off war with animal statues.
  3. At the start of the book the statues are at peace but two real kids, boy and girl, get attacked by an animal statue in a museum.
  4. They are rescued by a statue of a WW1 soldier. They then travel with him but I can't remember why.
  5. They definitely visit some sphinxes who are neutral in the human animal war but are very untrustworthy.
  6. At one point the soldier statue gets injured and has a hallucination of dying in the Battle of the Somme. He survives in the end I think.

Chronology and other info

I read this story a few years ago (2010 maybe) but I think it was written earlier than that maybe in the 1990s.

The book is a children's/YA book and was set in England, possibly London.

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Stoneheart

  1. The storyline was that all statues come to life and move around although humans don’t know this.

    Yes. That's the basic premise of the plot.

  2. The human statues are involved in a long running on-off war with animal statues.

    “A spit is a statue that the ‘maker’—sculptor, stone carver, whatever—has made to represent someone human. And because of that, while a maker works, something of that must flow into us, and fills that hole the taints have eating away inside them.”

  3. At the start of the book the statues are at peace but two real kids, boy and girl, get attacked by an animal statue in a museum.

    Yep.

  4. They are rescued by a statue of a WW1 soldier. They then travel with him but I can't remember why.

    Then the last bit of his mind that could think straight realized he was looking up at a dark statue, a soldier, a gunner in a World War One uniform, tin hat tipped down over his eyes, arms spread out against the stone, like he was resting. And over his shoulders was a waterproof cape that, for an instant, George had mistaken for wings.

  5. They definitely visit some sphinxes who are neutral in the human animal war but are very untrustworthy.

    “’Course it is,” said the Gunner. “I said we needed to talk to the Sphinxes. Though don’t call it Cleopatra’s whatsit if it comes up in conversation. They’re a bit touchy on the subject.”

  6. At one point the soldier statue gets injured and has a hallucination of dying in the Battle of the Somme. He survives in the end I think.

    He no longer thought he was in St. James’s Park. He couldn’t hear the distant growl of traffic. He heard guns rumbling in a rolling barrage, far away. And closer, he heard the flat crack and slap of rifles firing overhead in random counterpoint to the mechanical stutter of machine guns. He heard men shouting orders, he heard other men screaming for their mothers. He heard feet rushing past, he heard the crack-thump of a grenade and fewer people screaming after that.

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  • It sounds like that is it. Aug 24, 2016 at 10:59

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