Duane, Diane - So You Want to Be a Wizard
Nita keeps being beat up by the mean girls at school, so one day, she runs into the library to try and escape them. And there, among all the other So You Want to Be... career books for kids, she finds So You Want to Be a Wizard. She eventually makes friends with Kit, who is also being picked on at school and who also found a copy of the book. Together, they fight crime the evil forces of the universe!
I never read these as a kid, so it's interesting coming to them as an adult. There are a lot of cool bits in this book, from the importance of books and reading and language to being able to talk to trees. Some of the cool bits are fairly standard ones that didn't excite me (magic via Speech, talking to trees), but others were pretty nifty (a burping white hole, talking to machines).
You can clearly see the Tolkein and L'Engle influences on this book, and while I think the Gollum-take is a shoutout to Tolkein, many of the L'Engle influences look more like fic with the numbers filed off than shoutouts, just because so much of the plot is out of A Wind Through the Doors. I didn't mind in the beginning, but the similarities ended up throwing me out of what should have been the main emotional climax of the book.
That said, what makes this book stand apart from the hordes of other "kids discover secret powers and save the world" books is its sense of place. Duane loves New York City, and it shows.
Also, yay for Kit being Hispanic! I am not sure if Nita is or not; her first name is "Juanita," but I think her last name is "Callahan."
I was a little irked at the more traditional male/female split of talents between Kit and Nita; Kit (the boy) leans more toward talking with mechanical objects like cars and trains, while Nita (the girl) has more abilities to talk to plants.
But it was still a fun and fast read, and despite the L'Engle bits, there's enough of Duane's own neat ideas that I may go through the series.
I never read these as a kid, so it's interesting coming to them as an adult. There are a lot of cool bits in this book, from the importance of books and reading and language to being able to talk to trees. Some of the cool bits are fairly standard ones that didn't excite me (magic via Speech, talking to trees), but others were pretty nifty (a burping white hole, talking to machines).
You can clearly see the Tolkein and L'Engle influences on this book, and while I think the Gollum-take is a shoutout to Tolkein, many of the L'Engle influences look more like fic with the numbers filed off than shoutouts, just because so much of the plot is out of A Wind Through the Doors. I didn't mind in the beginning, but the similarities ended up throwing me out of what should have been the main emotional climax of the book.
That said, what makes this book stand apart from the hordes of other "kids discover secret powers and save the world" books is its sense of place. Duane loves New York City, and it shows.
Also, yay for Kit being Hispanic! I am not sure if Nita is or not; her first name is "Juanita," but I think her last name is "Callahan."
I was a little irked at the more traditional male/female split of talents between Kit and Nita; Kit (the boy) leans more toward talking with mechanical objects like cars and trains, while Nita (the girl) has more abilities to talk to plants.
But it was still a fun and fast read, and despite the L'Engle bits, there's enough of Duane's own neat ideas that I may go through the series.