Charmed Life

I've just finished reading this to my daughter Celyn (11, too disabled to read for herself). It's a fun story of Cat and his witchy sister Gwendolin living in a world that's almost ours but where witches and wizards exist and are well-known. Like an enormous wedge of literature it's one of those adve......more

this is a winning intro to what looks to be an enjoyable children's fantasy series. the young Chant siblings exist in a world with magic, one of many such worlds - or, rather, dimensions. after a tragic accident that leaves them orphans, older sister and talented witch Gwendolen takes to learning ma......more

My kids got super into this, trying to figure out why Gwendolen was so horrible and why Cat put up with it. Reading it aloud made me realize how deceptively simple it is, which sometimes made it seem like there was a lot of padding for such a small book, but it all came into play later. Which was ha......more

I guess I'll read the complete series, this book was good. While reading this, I realized that J. K. Rowling might have had some inspiration from this series for Harry Potter, not in terms of story or characters, but the fantasy and magical elements. The name 'You know who', the moving paintings, che......more

On the evolution chart of middle-grade fantasy stories, Jones' Chrestomanci appears somewhere between E. Nesbitt and Harry Potter - closer to the latter than the former, both chronologically and artistically. In fact, one sees in Charmed Life many of the original ingredients Rowling snapped up for P......more