Edward Eager, Magic with Rules |
 Feb 2 2007, 12:05 AM
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Knight Bus Driver in Training Posts: 592 Joined: 12:53pm July 21, 2005   |
The thread on E. Nesbit just came back, and I remembered that I learned about her in the same way someone else described - by reading Half Magic, by Edward Eager. Anyone that Jane, Mark, Katharine and Martha were that passionate about was bound to be wonderful.
Did you read his books as a child? Magic By the Lake, The Time Garden, Knight's Castle and Seven-Day Magic were all huge favorites. I loved the moments where the books would overlap a bit, and one set of characters would suddenly breeze into another set's adventure, and you'd find out a book or two later what was up. Also loved that the characters knew from the beginning that magic is a thing with rules, and that sooner or later they'd try to thwart the rules, and everything would go haywire, and Intervention Would Be Necessary. There's a moment at the end of Half Magic that I reread as an adult after my father died - Jane is the only one of the four children who really remembers their father, and the dried-up magic relents for a moment to half-restore him to her, in the sweetest and briefest and most comforting of ways, to assure her that all is well. (Perhaps this is what makes the books children's books - whereas the Harry Potter books are not. Something about that momentary relenting and reassurance, the impulse to restore something to a child who has lost so much... you don't find that in HP.) |
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