Howl's Moving Castle

Book: Howl's Moving Castle
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Audience: Grades 5 and up
In a Nutshell: a floating castle, a running scarecrow, a talking fire, a nasty witch, and some magical pink hair dye.

In the fairy tale world, the fair and virtuous maiden who gets the prince and the happy ending is always the youngest in the family. Sophie is well aware of this; as the oldest of three sisters, and a step-sister to boot, she knows that her life will be very unremarkable. It doesn't really bother her that much, and she accepts that her fate is to work hard in her family's hat shop for the rest of her life. But then, against all odds, interesting things start happening to her. The Witch of the Waste puts a powerful curse on Sophie that turns her into an old woman, and Sophie runs off and invites herself into the magical moving castle of the Wizard Howl, which roams the hills around her village. Inside she finds Howl's young apprentice, Michael, a fire demon named Calcifer who lives in the hearth, and a magical door. It opens onto one of three places in the kingdom, and one place in another world: ours. Howl himself is not as evil as his reputation claims; besides, it was a rep he started himself so he'd be a more intimidating wizard. He spends hours in the bathroom in order to look and smell nice, and his favorite pastime is getting girls to fall in love with him, then never seeing them again, but that's a pretty weak definition of evil by fairy tale standards. High school evil, sure, but there are bigger, eviler fish to fry here. Like the Witch of the Waste, who also put a curse on Howl, and it may catch up with him soon. And why is there a very persistent scarecrow following Sophie? She's an oldest daughter: what magic could she possibly have?

Howl's is a fun, energetic tale with lots of interesting characters, twists and turns, cool magic, and a bit of romance. I've been meaning to read it for years, and the anime version by Hayao Miyazaki finally prompted me to do it. I haven't seen the movie yet, but if Netflix comes through, I will tonight. More on that later...