

Charmed Life
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Series: Chrestomanci #1
Narrator: Gerard Doyle
Unabridged: 7 hr 11 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 02/04/2008
Categories: Children's Fiction, Fantasy Stories
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Series: Chrestomanci #1
Narrator: Gerard Doyle
Unabridged: 7 hr 11 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Recorded Books
Published: 02/04/2008
Categories: Children's Fiction, Fantasy Stories
Diana Wynne Jones was the multiple award-winning author of many fantasy novels for children, teenagers, and adults. Her book Howl's Moving Castle was made into an Academy Award-nominated major animated feature by Hayao Miyazaki. She received the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. Married to the medievalist J. A. Burrow, with whom she had three sons, she lived for many years in Bristol, the setting for many of her books.
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