Diana Wynne Jones
Books by Diana Wynne Jones
“There are two protagonists, who tell the story in alternating chapters: Nick Mallory in our own Britain, and Roddy in parallel-universe-Britain, where the same recognisable geography is referred to as the Isles of Blest. The Merlin is a political office in Roddy’s Britain, alongside the King. The old Merlin has died, apparently of natural causes, but Roddy suspects foul play; and so she embarks on a perilous quest to uncover the political conspiracy at work.” Read more...
The Best Teen Fantasy Books Set in Britain
Sylvia Bishop, Children's Author
“It is intricate. It is beautiful. Diana Wynne-Jones, as a writer, was incredibly fond of things that recontextualized everything. She included a conceit in Fire and Hemlock of these vases which would rotate when you pulled a lever: sometimes they would say ‘now here,’ but if you got them at exactly the right angle, they would say ‘nowhere.’ And that blew my mind as a nine-year-old; that was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen.” Read more...
Seanan McGuire, Novelist
“I could’ve picked pretty much any Diana Wynne Jones novel. Diana is magnificent author… Archer’s Goon is set in a city very much like Bristol, where she lived. The father is a university professor, just as Diana’s husband Charlie was a university professor. The novel itself involves seven strange entities or demigods who are bound to this town. They cannot leave, although they want to, and they each control a specific thing that happens in the town: crime, perhaps, or technology. One of them, we learn, lives, literally, in the past. A young boy gets to the bottom of what’s going on. It’s a complicated story, as much written for adults as for kids.” Read more...
Neil Gaiman, Novelist
“Young adult books often cut to the heart of human relationships. Literature for young people sometimes simplifies things by making them metaphorical, by moving them into a fairy-tale world. That often means YA stories give us some of the most profound stories of human relationships. Howl’s Moving Castle is a story of this caliber.” Read more...
Jenny Davidson, Literary Scholar
“Rhat was, for me, at seven or eight a very important book. Not just because I loved it, but because it was a sort of turning point for me in realising how wonderful books could be. It mixes magic and reality in such a brilliant way that the magic feels very real. It is about two sets of children, each from divorced families. The father from one and the mother from another have got together and this new blended family is struggling to get along. The children are given these magic chemistry sets and each different chemical does a different thing. One of the chemicals makes you fly, another one brings all your toys to life and another can turn you into someone else. One of them brings things to life, so they put this chemical on the toffee bars and the toffee bars come to life. They cast their wrappers as they get bigger, so their wrappers fall off and they start having baby toffee bars. All of this lovely attention to detail made it feel incredibly real. I adored this book and read it to all my little siblings and cousins. So I not only enjoyed it myself but I passed it on to them. That power of reading aloud to younger children, making them laugh and seeing them as excited as I was, I think it’s possibly part of why I’m doing what I’m doing now.” Read more...
Cressida Cowell, Children's Author
The Lives of Christopher Chant
by Diana Wynne Jones
A schoolboy discovers that in his dreams he travels to many worlds. I suppose the reason parallel worlds fiction appeals to children is because the child is a bit like a lunatic in some way…they haven’t yet been socialised or told the ways in which they have to direct their thoughts and censor their personalities.
Interviews where books by Diana Wynne Jones were recommended
The best books on Parallel Worlds, recommended by Joanna Kavenna
The highly respected author who has held fellowships at both Oxford and Cambridge universities discusses books that focus on parallel realities. Comes up with some great lesser-known must-read fiction
Magical Stories for Kids, recommended by Cressida Cowell
From wizards to alchemy and fairies to folklore, Cressida Cowell reveals the magical stories that were most important to her as a child (and which she now delights in sharing with her own children), and her own inspirations for writing about magic and magical worlds today.
The Best Love Stories, recommended by Jenny Davidson
From Jane Austen to James Baldwin, the best love stories in literature recommended by Jenny Davidson, novelist, historian and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Comfort Reads, recommended by Neil Gaiman
In his latest book, fans from around the world chose which of Neil Gaiman’s writings they liked the best, a great introduction to his writing for anyone not familiar with his work. Here the prolific, genre-bending author recommends some of his own favourite books: comfort reads to turn to in difficult times.
The Best Urban Fantasy Books, recommended by Seanan McGuire
We tell ourselves fantastical stories to account for all that cannot be explained, says Seanan McGuire, the multi-award winning author of the October Daye, InCryptid, and Indexing series. Here, she selects five of the best urban fantasy books—fabulous novels that help us find the magical in the mundane.
The Best Teen Fantasy Books Set in Britain, recommended by Sylvia Bishop
Britain offers rich pickings to writers: wild and windswept locations, peculiar folklore, a treasure trove of odd histories and even odder place names. Taking Britain as a starting point, many fantasy authors have produced stories that are at once wonderfully strange and hauntingly plausible. Our fantasy interviewer Sylvia Bishop picks out her top five fantasy books set in Britain for teen readers.
