Diana Wynne Jones

"Howl's Moving Castle " by Diana Wynne Jones Greenwillow: 1986

This is a wonderful book for young adults that I picked up at Home Plus. I had no idea, again, that it was for young adults. Oh, good books are sometimes wasted on the young because I found this book to be a terrific read. The main character, Sophia, is convinced she is destined for failure because she is the eldest of three daughters. Her mother died when she was young and then her father after marrying again dies too. Her step-mother is not what one would expect in these stories and tries to find a way of providing for both her own daughter and her step-daughters after it was found out that the father had not left very much money to provide for all of them.

Sophia and her family lived in the town of Market Chipping which was in Ingary which is not where the rest of us live. They have a king and a prince. There is magic everywhere. There is the Witch of the Waste who for some reason walks into the hat shop where Sophia works and upon seeing her turns her into an old lady.

Everyone in the book are having adventures including Sophia and of course there is Howl who has the moving castle and his ever-moving castle and mysterious blue fire-demon in his fireplace. There is one mystery layered upon another and the author skillfully solves them all in very satisfactory ways. As with real victims, Sophia has to find out her own part in the making herself into an old lady by the witch before she can break the spell.

There is a movie that was made from this book, but I have not been able to find it. It was premiered in Korea which would explain why the book was in a book store in Daejeon. The author of this delightful book creates a wonderful and complex plot of living and breathing characters and resolves all of the questions such a plot raises in a very satisfying way. If I get a chance to read more of this author, I will certainly do so no matter what the age group the particular book is intended for.

e.l. konigsburg

"The View from Saturday" by e.l. konigsburg Atheneum: 1996

I have written before that I read young adult books and in Korea I read any books in English I can get my hands on. I honestly did not know this book was a young adult book. It had a picture of four cups of tea on it and thought it was a murder mystery. All of the books in the Home Plus Book Store are tightly sealed with plastic and thumbing through a book before buying is not possible.

What I did encounter was a warm and wonderful book about a teacher returning to teaching after being paralyzed in an automobile accident and four of her sixth-grade students who had banded together calling themselves "The Souls."

I love the way the book was written. It was a series of short stories that were inter-connected by the fact that each story was about each of the member of the Souls and of course the teacher. On the back cover, the writer stated she had written some of the stories earlier and just edited them so that they were about the same group of students in one classroom.

One of the threads was a academic bowl and how the Souls became the unlikely state championship winners. Everyone learns something important and there is enough of a plot to keep the reader going until the end. The book may be for the younger reader, but I learned a lot about life and had a good time reading it. I picked it up and never put it down.