Review: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue | By genre | Guardian Unlimited Books: Once upon a time, quite recently, it seems, somewhere in the woods of New England there lived a small pack of shape-shifting goblins. Ageless, pitiless, feral, their purpose was to abduct, once in a great while, a suitably neglected, vulnerable young human: Henry Day, for example, seven-year-old son of a melancholic father and a preoccupied mother, big brother of twin baby nuisances. Stalking Henry Day to the hollow tree where he happened to be hiding one afternoon, these goblins trussed him up in yards of cobweb and vine and threw him in the river: a cruel baptismal ritual that turned him into a stunted metamorph just like them. Their chief, meanwhile, reconfigured as Henry's identical double, slipped inside the tree and curled up to wait for the search party. good statement of the facts, economically. 'reconfigured' right. 'for example' right. 'suitably' right. 'once in a great while' for sure.