Witch Week

Every page of this enchanting third book of the Chrestomanci Quartet is captivating, and wonderfully humorous! Charles and Nan are two dull kids on a strage world where witches still around, and ilegal! If you're a witch, you are going to be burned at the stake! This is a comical book about the ways choices effect peoples lives, and how we can sometimes (if we're lucky) go back and fix them. The wackyness of riding a mop and a garden hoe to escape the privet school for troubled childern, and the whole dress up of the cross examining room (black material draped along the walls, a chair with a wired cap to go on someone's head, sharp objects, and containers that say do not open! Danger!) that Chrestomanci uses when he pretends to be a government official looking for a witch are charming. I reccomend this book to any HARRY POTTER fan, because Diana Wynne Jones has got a magical touch in her fingers.

Diana Wynne Jones. Now, I don't want to say anything bad about dear old Harry, in fear of being deluged with hate mail. So, a disclaimer: I *liked* Harry Potter. Well, moderately. I don't think Harry Potter is a god or anything. After reading The Sorcerer's Stone, I thought "There has got to be more than this", and so I went out to find Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series. Now I've read two of them: Charmed Life, and Witch Week. Both books surpass Harry in depth of character (etc.) and in quality of writing, but Witch Week is the better of the two. The plot is intriguing: in a world exactly like ours, except that they still burn people as witches, someone in a sixth-grade class is accused of being a witch. It sounds pretty serious for a children's book, but Diana Wynne Jones treats her subject with sensitivity and humor. (Some parts are actually hilariously funny.) By the end, all the questions you had are answered, and everything is resolved in an unexpected but satisfactory way that only Diana Wynne Jones could pull off. Overall, an excellent book.If you think Harry Potter is the center of the universe--excuse me (don't insult anyone), let's start over, If you liked the Harry Potter books, you must try Diana Wynne Jones. If you're really devoted to Harry Potter, you'll probably never allow another book to take its place. But keep an open mind, and try to see that there are more great books out there.

Diana Wynne Jones was writing "Potteresque" fantasy long before we ever heard of Harry Potter. "Witch Week" is one of her best and most accessible fantasies, with fully dimensional characters and an enjoyably complex plot.

Although intended for a younger audience, the sheer power of this story, and the sinister alternate universe it creates has made it one of my all time favourites. It's one of those books in which you care so much about the characters that you want to know what happens to them after the novel is finished. What does Charles become, if not an enchanter? I hope the author writes another Chrestomanci story soon.

One day Mr. Crossley, a teacher at Larwood House (an English boarding school for witch orphans) finds a note on his desk: SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH. In a world where witches are still burned over bone-fires this is one of the most serious accusations a person can make. Is it just a joke? Or is there really a witch in the class? If so, who? And can they find out before the Inquisitor arrives? As the story progresses, we discover that there is more to it than first meets the eye. New subplots continuosly pop up. The question becomes not so much who is the witch, as who isn't? This story is more than just a story about magic, or parallel worlds. It's a story about real people in a world as real as our own; a world inhabited by people, who can be stubborn, nasty, selfcentered, shy, stupid, and smart. The characters are all people who have reasons for being the way they are. The villians are rarely evil, but instead just plain stupid and narrow-minded. This is a book written for kids of all ages. It can be easily read and understood, no matter who you are or where you are from