Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories

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Overview

Master storyteller Diana Wynne Jones presents ariveting collection of unpredictable tales, including:

  • A cat tells how the kindhearted wizard she owns is suddenly called upon to defeat a horrific Beast.
  • When Anne has mumps, her drawings come to life, and she must protect her home from them.
  • Four children become involved in the intrigue surrounding an innocent prince, an evil count, and a brave outlaw.

These fifteen stories and one novella will enchant, startle, and surprise!

A collection of ...

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Overview

Master storyteller Diana Wynne Jones presents ariveting collection of unpredictable tales, including:

  • A cat tells how the kindhearted wizard she owns is suddenly called upon to defeat a horrific Beast.
  • When Anne has mumps, her drawings come to life, and she must protect her home from them.
  • Four children become involved in the intrigue surrounding an innocent prince, an evil count, and a brave outlaw.

These fifteen stories and one novella will enchant, startle, and surprise!

A collection of sixteen stories including "The Plague of Peacocks," "Aunt Bea's Day Out," "The Fat Wizard," "No One," and "Everard's Ride."

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Old favorites come in new trimmings with the gathering together of these 16 previously published stories by Diana Wynne Jones in Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories. Shorter tales include "The Master," a vet's account of a strange, portentous dream she has about a house in the forest, and "The Girl Who Loved the Sun," wherein Phega's adoration for that celestial body causes her to repeatedly attempt to transform herself into a tree. Jones's four-part novella, "Everard's Ride," concludes the collection, with the tale of Cecelia and Alex, siblings who travel to a mysterious island to help Robert, a fugitive accused of murder. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
VOYA
Jones collects some of her best, previously published, short fiction in this anthology, covering contemporary, mystery, and fantasy settings. Some highlights include the short stories Enna Hittims and The Fluffy Pink Toadstool, which offer wonderfully fun and fantastical adventures. They have strange and wild plots where the impossible is absolutely possible and believable. The stories The Girl Jones and The Girl Who Loved the Sun are poignant tales of growing up and dealing with society's sometimes strict rules, leaving readers feeling thoughtful about their own possible choices in life. The dark and deeply suspenseful stories What the Cat Told Me, The Fat Wizard, and Little Dot are gripping until the end and show readers how difficult life situations can be, but how good things can happen in life with perseverance and effort. Finally, the novella Everard's Ride is full of other-dimension adventure, fairy-tale love, and friendship building. This collection will be in demand with readers who really like fantasy and science fiction genres. It is a must-have for public and school libraries where Jones's work is popular, where fantasy fiction is well liked, or where short fiction is requested or used for school assignments. Some of the more abstract point-of-view stories might be slightly difficult for younger readers; however, these stories will appeal to all reading levels fifth grade to adult. VOYA Codes: 5Q 3P M J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Will appeal with pushing; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2004, HarperCollins, 504p., and PLB Ages 11 to 18.
—Karen Sykeny
School Library Journal
Gr 6 Up-This collection of 15 short stories and one novella begins with the autobiographical "The Girl Jones," about nine-year-old Diana. Among the selections that follow, readers will find stories about a science-fiction writer who becomes involved in an interstellar revolution, a haunting encounter with werewolves and a sinister fool, and a talking cat cursed with long life. In the concluding novella, four children become embroiled in intrigue over an innocent prince, an evil count, and a brave outlaw. All of the selections have characters that are both appealing and realistically flawed, and the worlds they inhabit are brought to life through detail and humor. Each story smoothly draws readers in and brings its own mood and adventure. This is a good choice for collections in which the author has a following, though the lack of "Chrestomanci" stories and the somewhat daunting size may put off readers. The hefty volume includes most of the selections from Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories (1985; o.p.) and Believing Is Seeing: Seven Stories (1999). However, the lack of overlap with Stopping for a Spell (2004) and Mixed Magics (2001, all Greenwillow), along with the new tales included, makes this a solid addition.-Beth L. Meister, Yeshiva of Central Queens, Flushing, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
This eclectic collection of previously published stories will delight existing fans and win new ones. Here's an impressive range, from "Enna Hittims," in which a young girl's unintentional magic looses tiny heroes to ravage her home, to the novella "Everard's Ride," a historical fantasy full of epic political maneuverings. "The Girl Who Loved the Sun" provides an unusual romance among Jones's trademark humor. "Dragon Reserve, Home Eight" explores power on a world where each wife rules over her several husbands. Closer to home, in "Carruthers," Elizabeth uses her magical stick to overcome her sexist father. Stock stories gain depth when told from unfamiliar perspectives, as with "The Green Stone," narrated by the harassed scribe of a high-fantasy quest, or with "Little Dot's" narrator, the comfort-loving cat of a neighborhood Wizard. The presumably autobiographical "The Girl Jones" adds a touch of personal eccentricity. The running theme of surprise, reversed expectations, and the unexpected gives this collection a constant impact. Great work from one of the best modern fantasy authors; too bad none are new. (Fiction. 10+)

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780060555351
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 2/7/2006
  • Edition description: Reprint
  • Pages: 608
  • Sales rank: 311,766
  • Age range: 10 - 14 Years
  • Product dimensions: 4.18 (w) x 6.75 (h) x 1.21 (d)

Meet 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 wizards—and a charismatic nine-lived enchanter—her 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 Jones’s books garnered literary accolades: her novel Dogsbody was a runner-up for the 1975 Carnegie Medal, and Charmed Life won the esteemed Guardian children’s fiction prize in 1977. Since then, in addition to being translated into more than twenty languages, her books have earned a wide array of honors—including two Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honors—and appeared on countless best-of-the-year lists.

Her work also found commercial success: In 1992 the BBC adapted her novel Archer’s Goon into a six-part miniseries, and her bestselling Howl’s 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 Society’s 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 distressing”—one 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 Ruskin’s secretary, W.G . Collingwood. This time marked an important moment in Diana Wynne Jones’s 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 sister’s 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 father’s 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 stories—and much of her future work—were inspired by a limited but crucial foundation of classics: Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, The Arabian Nights, and Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages.

Fantasy was Jones’s passion from the start, despite receiving little support from her often neglectful parents. This passion was fueled further during her tenure at St. Anne’s 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 Jones’s 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.

Read an Excerpt

Unexpected Magic

Collected Stories
By Jones, Diana Wynne

Greenwillow Books

ISBN: 0060555335

The
Girl
Jones


It was 1944. I was nine years old and fairly new to the village. They called me "The girl Jones." They called anyone "The girl this" or "The boy that" if they wanted to talk about them a lot. Neither of my sisters was ever called "The girl Jones." They were never notorious.

On this particular Saturday morning I was waiting in our yard with my sister Ursula because a girl called Jean had promised to come and play. My sister Isobel was also hanging around. She was not exactly with us, but I was the one she came to if anything went wrong and she liked to keep in touch. I had only met Jean at school before. I was thinking that she was going to be pretty fed up to find we were lumbered with two little ones.

When Jean turned up, rather late, she was accompanied by two little sisters, a five-year-old very like herself and a tiny three-year-old called Ellen. Ellen had white hair and a little brown stormy face with an expression on it that said she was going to bite anyone who gave her any trouble. She was alarming. All three girls were dressed in impeccable starched cotton frocks that made me feel rather shabby. I had dressed for the weekend. But then so had they, in a different way.

"Mum says I got to look after them," Jean told me dismally. "Can you have them for me for a bit while I do her shopping? Then we can play."

I looked at stormy Ellen with apprehension. "I'm not very good at looking after little ones," I said.

"Oh, go on!" Jean begged me. "I'll be much quicker without them. I'll be your friend if you do."

So far, Jean had shown a desire to play, but had never offered friendship. I gave in. Jean departed, merrily swinging her shopping bag.

Almost at once a girl called Eva turned up. She was an official friend. She wore special boots and one of her feet was just a sort of blob. Eva fascinated me, not because of the foot but because she was so proud of it. She used to recite the list of all her other relatives who had queer feet, ending with, "And my uncle has only one toe." She too carried a shopping bag and had a small one in tow, a brother in her case, a wicked five-year-old called Terry. "Let me dump him on you while I do the shopping," Eva bargained, "and then we can play. I won't be long."

"I don't know about looking after boys," I protested. But Eva was a friend and I agreed. Terry was left standing beside stormy Ellen, and Eva went away.

A girl I did not know so well, called Sybil, arrived next. She wore a fine blue cotton dress with a white pattern and was hauling along two small sisters, equally finely dressed. "Have these for me while I do the shopping and I'll be your friend." She was followed by a rather older girl called Cathy, with a sister, and then a number of girls I only knew by sight. Each of them led a small sister or brother into our yard. News gets round in no time in a village. "What have you done with your sisters, Jean?" "Dumped them on the girl Jones." Some of these later arrivals were quite frank about it.

"I heard you're having children. Have these for me while I go down the Rec."

"I'm not good at looking after children," I claimed each time before I gave in. I remember thinking this was rather odd of me. I had been in sole charge of Isobel for years. As soon as Ursula was four, she was in my charge too. I suppose I had by then realized I was being had for a sucker and this was my way of warning all these older sisters. But I believed what I said. I was not good at looking after little ones.

In less than twenty minutes I was standing in the yard surrounded by small children. I never counted, but there were certainly more than ten of them. None of them came above my waist. They were all beautifully dressed because they all came from what were called the "clean families." The "dirty families" were the ones where the boys wore big black boots with metal in the soles and the girls had grubby frocks that were too long for them. These kids had starched creases in their clothes and clean socks and shiny shoes. But they were, all the same, skinny, knowing, village children. They knew their sisters had shamelessly dumped them and they were disposed to riot.

"Stop all that damned noise!" bellowed my father. "Get these children out of here!"

He was always angry. This sounded near to an explosion.

"We're going for a walk," I told the milling children. "Come along." And I said to Isobel, "Coming?"

She hovered away backward. "No." Isobel had a perfect instinct for this kind of thing. Some of my earliest memories are of Isobel's sturdy brown legs flashing round and round as she rode her tricycle for dear life away from a situation I had got her into. These days, she usually arranged things so that she had no need to run for her life. I was annoyed. I could have done with her help with all these kids. But not that annoyed. Her reaction told me that something interesting was going to happen.

"We're going to have an adventure," I told the children.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Unexpected Magic by Jones, Diana Wynne Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

The Girl Jones 1
Nad and Dan and Quaffy 13
The Plague of Peacocks 36
The Master 50
Enna Hittims 71
The Cirl Who Loved the Sun 89
The Fluffy Pink Toadstool 109
Auntie Bea's Day Out 118
Carruthers 131
What the Cat Told Me 156
The Creen Stone 181
The Fat Wizard 188
No One 203
Dragon Reserve, Home Eight 233
Little Dot 266
Everard's Ride 303

Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews
  • Anonymous

    Posted January 26, 2012

    Best Collection of Short Stories-- EVER

    Diana Wynne Jones knows people, animals, and magic on a level far beyond any other fantasy author (including Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, from whom she took college classes). She knows cats in particular, and the cat stories in this book are so true you'll find yourself looking at all the cats you've ever known and going "yep, that's her alright" and "I remember this one time when he..."
    The magic she writes is so genuine and so woven into her worlds that you can almost feel it raise the hairs on the back of your neck; you almost want to try some of the nicer spells just to see if it works.

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