Skip to main content

TBT: The Young Wizards Series


This Throw-Back Thursday goes out to the series that satisfied me between Harry Potter releases. 

Graphic found through Google and attributed to abottomlessbookbag

The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane was what kept me from pulling myself apart during the spaces between Harry Potter booms (or at least from rereading HP more than I already did). It's not really a fair comparison. The books are nothing alike. Their common similarities is simply that they both deal with magic, and that's about it.

So You Want to be a Wizard is the first in the series. It finds young Nita -- hounded by bullies from school--discovering a book in the library. Set up like the typical series book "so you want to be a", this one, Nita is astonished to discover, finishes the sentence with wizard. And Nita is willing to try anything at this point. After taking the Wizard's Oath, she meets up with fellow young wizard Kit and together they must make it through their Ordeal--a battle against the Lone Power. 

While I loved the first book in this series, I also thought it got a lot better as it continued. I loved the characters, and I wanted to find out what happened to them. I actually caught up to A Wizard's Holiday and then didn't read the last two books. 

I recommend this series constantly. Everyone who enjoys magical fantasy should give this one a try.





Comments

  1. I read a couple of these as a child, but never managed to love them as much as I wanted to. I think I just felt they weren't as magical as I wanted them to be, whatever that meant!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll  is a very entertaining classic. I think everyone knows the story of young Alice who follows a White Rabbit into the world of Wonderland where everything is just slightly (or significantly) strange. For some reason, every time I've picked up Alice's Adventures before, I've put it down without making it more than 10 pages or so. But this time, I managed to finish it. It's a quirky sort of book, but I enjoyed it. It did make me think of The Phantom Tollbooth (here's my review of that classic), but I preferred Carroll's novel to Juster's. There's some great play on words and delightful misunderstandings because of homophones and characters not paying attention to each other. I think this is a worthwhile classic, but I don't actually have that much to say about it. Middle Grade March Count: 5
Hello Lovelies!! It's a very special Top Ten Tuesday because it's also my 100th post!! Woohoo!! Honestly this is probably the longest I've stuck with a hobby so I'm pretty excited about this milestone. So The Broke and the Bookish 's topic this week is.. I went with books that I own but haven't read yet which I would like to take to a beach (if I could get to one, hahaha, Montana is a landlocked state).  Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys by Kate Brian If I Stay by Gayle Forman Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani Read My Lips by Teri Brown Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti So that's my list! It's heavy on contemporary fiction novels because summer brin...

TBT: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

In middle school, I was a member of this reading club where we had a set of books to read as a team, and then we did like little quizzes on them against other teams. (SUPER NERD!). And now, I'm not entirely certain, but I feel pretty sure that club was where I read this book for the first time. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare is a Newbery award winning historical fiction novel. Orphan Kit Tyler has been moved from her home in the Caribbean to her puritan relative's home in Connecticut.  She feels like she has nothing in common with these relatives, but she does form an attachment with an old Quaker woman and a young sailor, Nat. Of course breaking out of the mold is not without its price, and Kit learns this for herself when she is accused of witchcraft. This is one of those books that I think about constantly. I haven't reread it in several years, but I always want to. I recommend it frequently to other. This is a book for readers...