February 5, 2009
Yesterday I took my ten-year old's recommendation and read two of John Bellairs' novels for the pre-teen looking for chills and thrills. I loved both The Letter, the Witch, and The Ring, and The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder (which was completed by Brad Strickland after Bellair's death in 1991). They are perfect for kids willing to go a little gothic in their reading but not yet ready for blood curdling Cujo-types scenes of blood and guts. Hey, I am still not ready for that and never will be. John Bellairs is perfect for me, with his entertaining plots, likeable kids (who are smart and brave but still get scared and cry --yet they go out and do the right thing), strange adults, and fun, very creeped-out settings (the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the London of Sherlock Holmes, a manor house with a hedge maze hiding more than just a bench for two), as well as the seemingly normal small town of New Zebedee -- where a wizard and a witch are neighbors and school vacations are never long enough.
Bellairs' novels are easier to read than the Harry Potter books, the Pendragon series, or the Inkheart series. Not only because they are shorter in length, but also because they are more straightforward in plot while still being mysterious. In addition, the sentence and time structures are easier on the brain. The action moves forward in time without flashbacks, the children think like children and share their thoughts willingly, and the adults are set apart but still recognizable as the kind of adults kids would know, other than the fact that they can perform feats of magic (but maybe your kid does know someone like that, like the laundry fairy who brings clean clothes to their drawers more or less as needed).
All of John Bellairs' books (and he wrote many of them) are suitable for the nine to twelve crowd. Another series that I highly, highly, highly recommend is the Lionboy series by Zizou Corder (pen name of a mother/daughter team). This three-part series is more difficult to read than the Bellairs' novels but is great for read-alouds. Each chapter ends with a cliff hanger that had me reading ahead far into the night and yet I was still eager to re-read those chapters out loud the next day -- that's how good the Lionboy books are.
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