So you want to be a wizard

So you want to be a wizard / Diane Duane. -- Orlando : Magic Carpet Books Harcourt, 2001, c1983.

393 p. ; 19 cm.

(Young wizards series ; #1)

ISBN: 0-15-204940-1

Sequel: Deep wizardry.

1. Bullying – Fiction. 2. Fantasy fiction. 3. Intimidation – Fiction. 4. Wizards – Fiction.

Nita Callahan ducks into her local public library to avoid a gang of bullies. To avoid being followed she goes downstairs to the children's department, a place where "no respectable thirteen-year-old [would] ever set foot" But once down there, she starts to remember with pleasure all of the books that she’s borrowed and read. Then an unfamiliar title catches her attention.

It was one of those So You Want to Be a … books, a series on careers. So You Want to Be a Pilot there had been, and So You Want to Be a Scientist … a Nurse … a Writer..

But this one said, So you want to be a wizard.

It’s in the section with the books on card tricks and books on how to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but it’s not a book about creating illusions on stage or to amuse your friends at a party. It’s an instruction manual on how to freeze fire, burn rain, talk to trees and stones, and slow down the death of the universe.

Fascinated, Nita takes the book home – unfortunately, the bullies are laying in wait for her on the way. That night, feeling her bruises and wanting to regain her favorite pen stolen by her tormentors, she takes the Wizard’s Oath in the book. The next morning she can talk to trees. Even more amazing, she runs into another novice Wizard from her school attempting to cast a spell. It turns out he also has a problem with bullies, while the girls pick on Nita for being a bookworm, the boys pick on Kit Rodriguez for his Spanish accent. They decide to practice together using their manuals (Kit found his in a used bookstore). But the first thing they conjure up is an immense astrological phenomena, a white hole, a warp in space-time.

The first in the author’s young wizard series, So you want to be a wizard is a fast-paced fantasy adventure with a good helpings of humor and science in the mix. The series also a well-tried antidote for anyone suffering with post-Potter depression (the melancholy that comes from not having another Harry Potter book to anticipate).