Synopses & Reviews
It is eight years after the tours from offworld have stopped. High Chancellor Querida has retired, leaving Wizard Corkoran in charge of the Wizards' University. Although Wizard Corkoran's obsession is to be the first man on the moon, and most of his time is devoted to this project, he decides he will teach the new first years himself in hopes of currying the favor of the new students' families--for surely they must all come from wealth, important families--and obtaining money for the University (which it so desperately needs). But Wizard Corkoran is dismayed to discover that one of those students--indeed, one he had such high hopes for, Wizard Derk's own daughter Elda--is a hugh golden griffin, and that none of the others has any money at all. < p=""> Wizard Corkoran's money-making scheme backfires, and when Elda and her new friends start working magic on their own, the schemes go wronger still. And when, at length, Elda ropes in her brothers Kit and Blade to send Corkoran to the moon...well...life at the Wizards' University spins magically and magnificently out of control. < p=""> This breathtakingly brilliant sequel to < i=""> Dark Lord of Derkholm<> is all one would expect from this master of genre. <> < p=""> Books for the Teen Age 2001 (NYPL) andBest Children's Books 2000 (PW)<>
Synopsis
It is eight years after the tours from offworld have stopped. High Chancellor Querida has retired, leaving Wizard Corkoran in charge of the Wizards' University. Although Wizard Corkoran's obsession is to be the first man on the moon, and most of his time is devoted to this project, he decides he will teach the new first years himself in hopes of currying the favor of the new students' families—for surely they must all come from wealth, important families—and obtaining money for the University (which it so desperately needs). But Wizard Corkoran is dismayed to discover that one of those students—indeed, one he had such high hopes for, Wizard Derk's own daughter Elda—is a hugh golden griffin, and that none of the others has any money at all.
Wizard Corkoran's money-making scheme backfires, and when Elda and her new friends start working magic on their own, the schemes go wronger still. And when, at length, Elda ropes in her brothers Kit and Blade to send Corkoran to the moon . . . well . . . life at the Wizards' University spins magically and magnificently out of control.
This breathtakingly brilliant sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm is all one would expect from this master of genre.
About the Author
In a career spanning four decades, award-winning author Diana Wynne Jones wrote more than forty books of fantasy for young readers. Characterized by magic, multiple universes, witches and wizardsand a charismatic nine-lived enchanterher books were filled with unlimited imagination, dazzling plots, and an effervescent sense of humor that earned her legendary status in the world of fantasy. From the very beginning, Diana Wynne Joness books garnered literary accolades: her novel
Dogsbody was a runner-up for the 1975 Carnegie Medal, and Charmed Life won the esteemed Guardian childrens fiction prize in 1977. Since then, in addition to being translated into more than twenty languages, her books have earned a wide array of honorsincluding two Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honorsand appeared on countless best-of-the-year lists.
Her work also found commercial success: In 1992 the BBC adapted her novel Archers Goon into a six-part miniseries, and her bestselling Howls Moving Castle was made into an animated film by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki in 2004. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006, and became one of the most financially successful Japanese films in history.
Diana Wynne Jones has also been honored with many prestigious awards for the body of her work. She was given the British Fantasy Societys Karl Edward Wagner Award in 1999 for having made a significant impact on fantasy, received a D.Lit from Bristol University in 2006, and won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Convention in 2007.
Born just outside London in 1934, Diana Wynne Jones had a childhood that was very vivid and often very distressingone that became the fertile ground where her tremendous imagination took root. When the raids of World War II reached London in 1939, the five-year-old girl and her two younger sisters were torn from their suburban life and sent to Wales to live with their grandparents. This was to be the first of many migrations, one of which brought her family to Lane Head, a large manor in the author-populated Lake District and former residence of John Ruskins secretary, W.G . Collingwood. This time marked an important moment in Diana Wynne Joness life, where her writing ambitions were magnified by, in her own words, early marginal contacts with the Great. She confesses to having offending Arthur Ransome by making a noise on the shore beside his houseboat, erasing a stack of drawings by the late Ruskin himself in order to reuse the paper, and causing Beatrix Potter (who also lived nearby) to complain about her and her sisters behavior. It struck me, Jones said, that the Great were remarkably touchy and unpleasant, and I thought I would like to be the same, without the unpleasantness. Prompted by her penny-pinching fathers refusal to buy the children any books, Diana Wynne Jones wrote her first novel at age twelve and entertained her sisters with readings of her stories. Those early storiesand much of her future workwere inspired by a limited but crucial foundation of classics: Malorys Morte DArthur, The Arabian Nights, and Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages.
Fantasy was Joness passion from the start, despite receiving little support from her often neglectful parents. This passion was fueled further during her tenure at St. Annes College in Oxford, where lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis increased her fascination with myth and legend. She married Medievalist John Burrow in 1956; the couple have three sons and six grandchildren.
After a decade of rejections, Diana Wynne Joness first novel, Changeover, was published in 1970. In 1973, she joined forces with her lifelong literary agent, Laura Cecil, and in the four decades to follow, Diana Wynne Jones wrote prodigiously, sometimes completing three titles in a single year. Along the way she gained a fiercely loyal following; many of her admirers became successful authors themselves, including Newbery Award winners Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman, and Newbery Honor Book author Megan Whalen Turner. A conference dedicated solely to her work was held at the University of West England, Bristol, in 2009. Diana Wynne Jones continued to write during her battle with lung cancer, which ultimately took her life in March 2011. Her last book, Earwig and the Witch, was published by Greenwillow Books in 2012.