Celebrate Diana Wynne Jones!

Michelle Raborn meditates on the impact of Diana’s work across time and generations.

“I used to think my experience with Diana Wynne Jones was incredibly personal, unique to me, something I could never publicly share. But as this blog tour has progressed it has become increasingly clear that Diana Wynne Jones transformed many lives.”

Leila Roy finds the common thread in The Ogre Downstairs, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Dark Lord of Derkholm.

“All of them highlight DWJ’s ability to give anything—and I do mean *anything*, whether it be a toffee bar, an intelligent goose, or a broom—life and personality. Each of the three is very, very funny at times, but never, ever slight; each also has moments of real darkness and danger. More simply put, each one, in its own way, is a joy.”

Amy tells how Diana Wynne Jones’s lively brain wakens her own.

“Each book of hers was so unique— unique from each other, unique from everything else, and all so ALIVE. I developed a new theory. So many of her books involve people who can travel between alternate universes and parallel dimensions, I decided, THAT’S HOW SHE DOES IT. Every one of these worlds and characters she supposedly created is REAL, somewhere, in another universe. She just peeks on through and transcribes what she sees there!”

Charlotte writes about the inestimable pleasure of rereading, and touches upon a few books that haven’t previously been mentioned.

“I have the sense that the stories were so complicatedly vivid in Diana’s imagination that words are barely enough to hold them. The reader is challenged to surrender herself to the flow, trusting that what is completely baffling will someday make sense. I remember having this same feeling with many books I read as a child …  To have that same feeling as a grown-up reader is rare indeed.”

Liz Burns on rereading Fire and Hemlock:

“Writing this review is hard for two reasons: first, because I kept getting swept into the story and forgetting to take notes to write up a review; and second, because how can anyone else’s words do justice for Diana Wynne Jones?”

Fire and Hemlock is a multilayered book, and Sara Ryan peels away some of those layers.

“It’s exactly that space, between memory and dream, that FIRE AND HEMLOCK occupies, and why it’s so perfectly a book about stories as well as everything else it is.”

Kristin at the Scholastic Book Club’s Book Box pays tribute.

“I learned that everyday things can be magical if you just use a little imagination. Diana’s worlds were richly complex, peopled with characters who felt so real you could almost expect to see them sitting next to you on the train.”

At a crucial time in her life, Jen Petro-Roy discovered literary community through Diana’s work.

“Amidst the turbulent (or what I then considered turbulent) atmosphere of high school, of preparing for college, of change, sometimes a magical universe where anything can happen is exactly what a girl needs.”

Jenny Davidson — whose post was hit by the famous DWJ travel jinx! — on recurring tropes throughout Diana’s work, and why she returns to the books again and again.

“There is some core sense in which Diana Wynne Jones is my absolutely favorite novelist.  Her books have an unusual quality of being both delightful and emotionally true.”

Diana was (as its editor, Roger Sutton, says) “a long and true friend” of The Horn Book — and here they share a marvelous essay she wrote about school visits.