House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones

[lightreads]

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Not much to say. I didn’t grow up on DWJ; I was too busy reading things incredibly inappropriate for my age, like Heinlein and Dune and Watership Down (people who say that book is for kids are liars, Liars!).



DWJ stuck to her roots to the end. This is an aggressively cute kid adventure in an alternate magical world, with an ever-expanding wizard’s house and a kingdom to be saved. It all ties off at the end with an improbably neat bow. Very much the old breed of young adult, a little bit cartoonish, a little bit silly, but kind and safe right through. You know what I mean.





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Comments

[ecaterin]

Yes!!! I've so far read two complete sets of Harriot books to little bitty pieces. They're all missing pages and covers. Time to get set number three in hard-back now that I'm all grown up-ed :) He's a phenomenal story teller. I never get tired of reading his stuff. Even though I know every story, he still makes me laugh till I cry, and cry till I sob.

The only reason I didn't actually miss any of Narnia is because I bought a collected, illustrated hard-back to read to my kids. Of course, we read the cover right OFF the thing cause they loved to look at the pictures. There's a reason for this. I almost NEVER read them books with pictures, because they'd interrupt me all the time to ask whether there were pictures, or they'd keep hopping up and down to look over my shoulder, or they'd never fall asleep because every time they heard the page turn they'd be all IS THERE A PICTURE ON THAT PAGE??? I remember the GLEE I felt when I got books 2, 3, and 4 of Harry Potter on my Palm device, cause I could read at bed time in complete darkness and they'd fall asleep!

These boys could hear hours and hours of reading per day. When the youngest was in utero or the years he was nursing, I was sitting so many hours per day that it was not uncommon for me to do 4 hours of reading aloud. At that quantity of reading, I insisted on reading books that *I* liked :P When they got old enough to operate the CD player and we started checking out books on CD, their typical intake of read aloud went up to about 10 hours per day :P

Hmm. I'm chatty tonight! Sorry! :D