The Magic Grandfather, by Jay Williams

[rachelmanija]

A charming fantasy about a boy whose eccentric grandfather turns out to be a wizard. When Sam’s grandfather gets accidentally sucked into another dimension, he turns to his cousin Sarah for help. Not because she knows anything about magic—her ambition is to become the first woman locomotive driver—but because she’s the most practical and determined person he knows.

She was afraid of only three things in the world: firstly, that many other girls would beat her to it, and secondly, that when she was grown up there wouldn’t be any more railroads, and lastly, of spiders.

Sarah scorns Sam’s protests that he has no magic talent himself. The next thing he knows, he’s studying to be a wizard with her help, and both of them are evading concerned parents, nosy landlords, and an extremely annoying boy named Wendell who finds out their secret and blackmails them over it.

This book unexpectedly has one of the most realistic-feeling depictions of someone learning magic that I’ve read. It involves a lot of actual studying, and an extremely cool scene in which Sam uses a passage from The Wind in the Willows to practice visualization of written description. It also has an unexpected “TV is bad” message. But mostly it’s just a lot of fun. The annoying Wendell gets turned into a TV set (and then end up even more annoying as it can’t be turned off), adults are helpful in the ways that only adults can be in stuff like telling other adults to go away, and a spider-alien who throws on a bathrobe to do a quick impersonation of a human is appalled to then have to maintain it for a game of gin rummy.

Also, Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine is a book that exists in this world.

Magic Grandfather

Comments

[movingfinger]

I would have loved this one as a kid! I don't think our public library can have had many of the Danny Dunns, and they certainly didn't have this.

I can't remember whether I've already mentioned Magic in the Alley by Mary Calhoun to you, but I think you'd like it. Children find a box of magic objects and use them. May be available via ILL.

[rachelmanija]

Yes! It's great.

https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/938055.html

[movingfinger]

Oh gosh, sorry to repeat myself! Our library had Henry Reeds, but I think not much Danny Dunn.

[rachelmanija]

No problem! It was a great rec.

[sovay]

and a spider-alien who throws on a bathrobe to do a quick impersonation of a human is appalled to then have to maintain it for a game of gin rummy.

That by itself makes me want to read the book.

[musesfool]

and a spider-alien who throws on a bathrobe to do a quick impersonation of a human is appalled to then have to maintain it for a game of gin rummy.

That sounds AMAZING.

[naomikritzer]

Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine was the one Danny Dunn book I had growing up.

The portrayal of how computers worked was deeply questionable -- I think it's probably not one of the stronger books in that series.

[rachelmanija]

An unfortunate choice.

[ethelmay]

That was the only one we had as well. I did get most of the others from the library, but I actually liked that one the best. Possibly because I read it over and over before realizing it was part of a somewhat formulaic series, so the others were the ones that seemed more formulaic, if you see what I mean.

[giandujakiss]

i loved this book so much back in the day; dog eared copy and everything

[lunabee34]

Me too! My childhood copy is now on my kiddo's shelf.

[thomasyan]

Oooh, this sounds fun. But I've already got both When Darkness Loves Us and also an ebook on loan, so I guess I better wait before looking for this one.....

[sholio]

This sounds neat! The title sounds vaguely familiar, but the plot not at all. I'll have to look for it!

[karalee]

I have to give this a try once I'm back in the US! It sounds like a lot of fun.

[jack]

I remember the Magic Grandfather! Although I didn't remember the title at all. I remember enjoying it. Even then the heaviness of the anti-tv message stood out, although I hadn't quite mastered the art of disagreeing with implicit messages yet :)

I remember wondering how I would do at clear imagination. At the time it didn't stand out as especially novel, but also, I must have read a lot of other books I don't remember *at all* so it probably did.

[rushthatspeaks]

Oh, I'm so glad you liked this one!

It's one of my formative books, not just as a reader but as a writer. Because of course I tried the visualization thing, and of course I tried it on other things I was reading, and I quickly became aware that it worked with some books and not others, and that some of the books it didn't work on were still good. So I think it's the book that really got me into analyzing what the text I was reading was doing for me as a reader, and how.

Did your copy have illustrations? Mine did, and it had an absolutely priceless illo of the spider alien in a bathrobe, looking both exactly like a spider alien in a bathrobe and like someone you could mistake for an elderly gin rummy player at a distance in dim light if your eyes weren't so great. Really perfectly drawn.

I always wanted more of the other dimension. I also wanted six jillion sequels, including trips to multiple other dimensions and Sarah's career as a locomotive driver/witch/force of nature.

I was delighted and unsurprised to stumble across the "aldoragamba" incantation in real occult sources decades later-- Roger Bacon, I believe. Actually all of the magic in the book is surprisingly close to medieval English sourcebooks.

[rachelmanija]

YES. The illustrations are fantastic.

I would also love a sequel. Maybe next Yuletide.