The Evil Wizard Smallbone, by Delia Sherman (Candlewick, $17.99 hardcover, 416p., ages 10-12, 9780763688059, September 13, 2016)
In her entertaining modern-day fantasy set in Maine, Delia Sherman (Changeling; The Freedom Maze) examines whether an evil wizard can also be good; the qualities necessary for success; and the importance of writing one's own story.
After Uncle Gabe locks him in the cellar, 12-year-old Nick Reynaud runs away to avoid the rest of the "larruping" he was promised. Ever since Nick's mother died three years ago, Uncle Gabe had gone "from crabby to mean," viewing his nephew as "a waste of time, space, and Dinty Moore stew." Cold, tired, hungry and blinded by snow, Nick stumbles upon an enormous, sprawling house whose front door opens into the magically sentient shop, Evil Wizard Books. Three-hundred-year-old Evil Wizard Smallbone takes the boy into his strangely cozy lair, deems him "scrawny as a plucked chicken and numb as a haddock," renames him "Foxkin" and forces him into service as his new apprentice (more like minion). Nick refuses to believe "this crazy old dude" is a wizard, and it takes being turned into a spider to convince him it's true. Magic intrigues him, but Nick wonders whether "turning people into things" is any better than "laying into them with a strap."
As Nick competently attends to household chores and looks after the sweet barnyard animals he likes more than humans, he ponders how best to escape yet another bully. Thanks to the magic of Evil Wizard Books, he soon discovers E-Z Spelz for Little Wizardz, and he dives right in. In the book's Aptitude Test, Nick learns that his confidence is a "sometimes thing" and that his control and concentration "both stink." As the months pass, Nick studies hard and winds up learning as much about himself as he does about "fummydiddling with enchanted doo-dads."
Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in quaint Smallbone Cove, the nearby coastal town of fishing nets and seagulls, a "practically perfect place" of eerily similar townspeople controlled and supposedly protected by the Evil Wizard Smallbone. A second evil wizard, vile werewolf Fidelou with his gang of shape-shifting were-coyotes on motorcycles, wants in. Fidelou, who came to the U.S. from France 400 years ago, is looking to expand his own territory and gobble up the town. Nick will have to use all of his wits and newly honed magic when the two evil wizards go head to head.
A truly irrepressible hero, Nick has a lot to learn. But armed with important truths learned from his mother before she died, large doses of his own magic, and plenty of stubbornness, he is more than up to the task. The Evil Wizard Smallbone is a terrific middle-grade fantasy from a skillful, witty, always-inventive storyteller. --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI.
Shelf Talker: Delia Sherman populates her excellent middle-grade fantasy with evil wizards, bloodthirsty were-beasts and a 12-year-old apprentice whose magical pursuits help him find himself.
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