Blog on the Lillypad
Sunday, December 28, 2003
 | Half Magic
I have a friend at work who has a six year old daughter. Jodi reads to her daughter Andi regularly, and so I have filled her with tons of information and recommendations on great children's books. (I used to work in publishng.) On my recommendation, she read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Andi. So to encourage Jodi and keep her well stocked on great books, I went to our local non-franchised bookstore (Quail Ridge books at Ridgeway Shopping Center in Raleigh) and purchased A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The sales assistant and I got to chatting about great books, and I commented that I love the Moffat series. She recommended Edward Eager's book, Half Magic, which is a story about four children who find a magic coin that grants HALF of each wish. So to get what you want, you have to wish for twice as much. I purchased a copy for myself. |
While the book certainly has its charm and is highly readable, I wouldn't place it as high on my list as The Moffats, but then, children may find it far more interesting than anything by Eleanor Estes (author of the Moffat series). It does have more outright adventure and the humor is more obvious. An oddity about children's literature is that if you handed ten great books to kids and the same books to their parents, and asked them to rank the books, the children would differ from the parents every time, even if the parents were trying to think like their children. So Half Magic may be one of those books that kids will run with, because it does contain the elements that intrigue so many children: a gang of kids and magic with a slight twist to it.
