Wild Robert...

[fajrdrako]

Let me confess right up front that I am one of those fantasy fans who thinks Diana Wynne Jones is a better writer than J.K. Rowling and who can't help feeling a twinge of protest that it is Rowling who has the fame and riches. Or maybe I'd just like to see a good movie version of Power of Three or Dogsbody or Howl's Moving Castle. Oh, wait a minute - I did see a good movie version of Howl's Moving Castle. How nice to already have what I wished for!

Wild Robert was written in 1989 – how did I ever miss it? It's been re-issued with some very nice illustrations by Mark Zug. Though it's simpler and shorter than mose Diana Wynne Jones stories, its theme is typical. The protagonist, Heather, is a young girl whose parents are running a stately manor for the National Trust is bored, lonely, and trying to escape the hordes of tourists that come to the place every day. Doesn't she have a bedroom of her own to go to? Maybe not. The kids in Diana Wynne Jones novels tend to have odd lives. It's very typical of Jones' books that Heather has to go to the crabby gardener or the lady who runs the snack shop to scrounge something to eat for lunch. Even more typical, that she fails to succeed at this and is left, in the end, to steal strawberries.

On a mysterious mound in the grounds, she evokes – and then meets – Wild Robert, the young sorcerer who was trapped in the mound more than three hundred years ago, who has a habit of putting a spell on anyone who annoys him – turning them into various animals. And Heather does her best to keep him out of trouble.

A fine, light fantasy-adventure for any bored, imaginative kid.