The Lives of Christopher Chant

September 28, 1998
Set in a world in which magic is the norm, this delectable adventure profiles the boyhood of the famous enchanter who plays a prominent role in the author's Chrestomanci series. Ages 10-up.

April 25, 1988
Young Christopher Chant has very unusual dreams: he gets out of bed, walks to the corner of the nursery and enters a lush, green valley that can lead him to any one of the hundreds of worlds that comprise what he calls the ``Almost Anywheres.'' Christopher doesn't tell anyone about his dreams because he thinks everyone has them. When his father loses all of his money, Christopher and his mother must go live with Uncle Ralph; he is ecstatic to learn that Christopher can bring solid objects back from the worlds he visits, and so uses him to perform some experiments. Then Christopher's father forces him to go live at Chrestomanci Castle, where Christopher is told he must become the next governing magician. Jones has written a mesmerizing account of the boyhood adventure of the famous magician who starred in Charmed Life. Her ability to mesh magic and realism results in an enthralling story about a boy just discovering his powers. Ages 12-up.

July 1, 2001
These four welcome reissues are loosely linked by the character Chrestomanci, a magician with nine lives, whose charge is to maintain the balance of magic among parallel universes.

(Copyright 2001 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

May 1, 1988
Gr 5-9 -Christopher Chant has nine lives. As a small boy in Victorian London, he discovers that he can leave his body at night and travel to other worlds. When Uncle Ralph asks him to bring back certain packages from his travels "as an experiment," he is glad to have an excuse for more adventures. As one of the only two nine-lived people in our world, he becomes apprentice and successor to Gabriel de Witt, the world's strongest enchanter or Chrestomanci. While learning to use his powers, Christopher finds that Uncle Ralph is really an evil enchanter who has been using him to get materials to increase his own power and challenge the Chrestomanci. At first, the pace of the plot is so leisurely that readers are not sure in what direction the story is going. However, Jones' usual wit and inventiveness come through in these dreamlike opening chapters and lead on to the fast action of the concluding ones. A rich cast of characters is assembled, from this world and others. Jones writes of magic with such absolute conviction that there is no room for doubt. Ruth S. Vose, San Francisco Public Library