It

It Stephen king paperback copyright 1986 1090 pages ISBN 0451169514 The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years--if it ever did end--began, so far as I can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain." — This is the first line of "It," the beginning of one of Stephen King's masterpieces. — In the summer of 1958, seven friends encountered something horrible in their town of Derry, Maine. This something fed on children, hunting them, preying on them, and devouring them. It could shape itself in any way It liked, whatever their nightmares suited, but always with one trademark: the semblance of a clown. The seven friends all had something in common: They had all escaped It at some point. And in that summer, they learned about It, confronted It, and killed It... or so they thought. 28 years later... A boy named Adrian Mellon is apparently thrown off a bridge by two other boys for his sexuality. It seems like an open-and-shut case, but the boys claim that there was something down below... a clown and a cloud of balloons. Soon the friends are being called back to Derry, told that It is back. They made a vow, sealed in blood, to return if It wasn't dead. "It" is two stories being told at once. One is the story of their childhood, of their first encounter with Pennywise the Clown, their troubles with the local bullies, the impact of It upon their lives, their own personal struggles, and the eventual defeat of It.