Literature and film Ways in Which Howl’s Moving Castle Is Like a Kaleidoscope Halfway through the book, the author turns the idea on its head…
Literature and film Tribute to Maurice Gee We spent quite some time trying to find examples of such books where a character dies, without the book being specifically a problem book about the protagonist dealing with death, because it wasn’t as common as I’d first thought.
Literature and film Dangerous Spaces and Labyrinth In both works, a girl is drawn by a charismatic male figure into a fantasy world where she has experiences that symbolise her real-world wants…
Literature and film Power and class in the Chrestomanci series In Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones (1977), we see a young boy with magical powers going to live in a castle, where he will be taught how to use his magic. (Before assuming this is a knockoff of any other children’s fantasy, it is important to note that
Literature and film Echoes of Tolkien in Dalemark In Dalemark, Diana Wynne Jones has taken Tolkien’s ideas about linguistics and the use of fictional found artifacts as ‘sources’ for his work, and she has tried to improve on them.
Literature and film The Undying in Diana Wynne Jones’s Dalemark series The way magic works in Diana Wynne Jones’s Dalemark series is interesting, and the natures of the magicians are even more so. In this post I’m going to look at how Jones uses the magic system she develops in the series to craft a statement about the value of writing.
