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This is a line drawing in response to last week's Illustration Friday: Caution. I'm working with my 8th grade Talented Art students & encouraging them to respond weekly in their sketchbooks.

This, of course, is just my line drawing for one of Aesops Fables. I'll be working on the color image this weekend. The fable: The Kid & the Wolf. A kid, returning without protection from the pasture, was pursued by a wolf. Seeing he could not escape, he turned round, and said "I know, friend wolf, that I must be your prey, but before I die I would ask of you one favor you will play me a tune to which I may dance." The wolf complied, and while he was piping and the kid was dancing, some hounds hearing the sound ran up and began chasing the wolf. Turning to the kid, he said, "It is just what I deserve, for I, who am only a butcher, should not have turned piper to please you." The moral of the story: In time of dire need, clever thinking is a key or Outwit your enemy to save your skin.

Here's a peek at the line art for the illustration Rikki Tikki Tavi. I left the original art at Kinko's—of all things. I have to use their large format scanner to bring it down in size for these postings. I think the father's arm looks too wooden. But, that whole area will be almost totally in shadow—will try to fix, though. The final will be in charcoal.

The Game
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Publisher: Firebird/Penguin Group
ISBN: 10: 0-14-240718-6
ISBN: 13: 978-0-14-240718-9

Hayley is a young girl living in London with her grandparents since her parents disappeared when she was a baby. Her overly strict grandmother keeps her virtually a prisoner at home, especially denying her knowledge of the mysteriously beautiful “mythosphere” which her grandfather studies on his computers. Finally she is banished in disgrace (but without being told why) to the home of relatives in Ireland.

Glumly expecting an even harsher household, Hayley is pleasantly bewildered to find that “the Castle” is a lively place overflowing with friendly aunts and young cousins her own age who seem to have been expecting her for ages.

The children eagerly introduce her into their secret game, a scavenger hunt for objects like a scale from the dragon that circles the zodiac, Sleeping Beauty’s spindle, a drinking horn used by Beowulf, and a hair from Prester John’s beard. Since Hayley has grown up uneducated, she does not realize how rare these are; but she is delighted when the search takes them into the forbidden mythosphere:

“They could see the strand they were on now, a silvery, slithery path, coiling away up ahead. The worst part, to Hayley’s mind, was the way it didn’t seem to be fastened to anything at the sides. Her feet, in their one pink boot and one black boot, kept slipping. She was quite afraid that she was going to pitch off the edge. It was like trying to climb a strip of tinsel. She hung on hard to Troy’s warmer, larger hand and wished it were not so cold. The deep chilliness made the scrapes on the front of her ache.

To take her mind off it, she stared around. The rest of the mythosphere was coming into view overhead and far away, in dim, feathery streaks. Some parts of it were starry swirls, like the Milky Way, only white, green, and pale pink, and other more distant parts flickered and waved like curtains of light blowing in the wind. Hayley found her chest filling with great admiring breaths at its beauty, and she stared and stared as more and more streaks and strands came into view.”

It is obvious almost from the start that Hayley is a special child. Just how special is revealed slowly as the story progresses and Hayley learns who she and her parents really are. Jones has used the plot device of walking between worlds in previous novels, but The Game is separate from her other books.

A knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology may help the reader recognize some of the characters whom Hayley does not know, but Jones introduces them all in a curtain-call endnote. This short novel or novella is in the Firebird series for young readers, although it, like Jones’ other novels, will charm readers of all ages.

The Pinhoe Egg: A Chrestomanci Book
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Publisher: Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins
ISBN10: 0-06-113124-5
ISBN13: 978-0-06-113124-0

The Pinhoe Egg adds a sixth novel to Jones’ witty Young Adult tales of Chrestomanci, the debonair and unflappable super-enchanter who is a government employee in a Related World where magic exists. It takes place about a year after the events in Charmed Life (1977).

The Pinhoe Egg is set in Chrestomanci Castle and the nearby village of Ulverscote. As is common in centuries-old English small villages, one family has come to predominate. Practically everyone in Ulverscote is a Pinhoe or is married to a Pinhoe. The same situation exists in neighboring Helm St. Mary where the dominant family is the Farleighs.

The adult Pinhoes and the Farleighs are all wizards and witches to some degree, overseen by a male Gaffer and a female Gammer who are the most powerful magicians in their clans, but trying to keep a low profile living so close to Chrestomanci.

The main characters are four pre-teens; Marianne and Joe Pinhoe in Ulverscote, and Eric (Cat) Chant and Chrestomanci’s son Roger who live in the Castle. Marianne is an observer when Gammer Edith, the ancient Pinhoe matriarch, loses her wits and has to be gently locked away.

Unfortunately, she has not lost any of her powers, and she begins casting spells against the Farleighs whom she has never liked. The Farleighs, assuming that all the Pinhoes are attacking them, retaliate. Gammer Edith has previously bespelled the other Pinhoes to keep them from noticing her misuse of magic. Marianne grows increasingly frustrated as her parents and all her uncles and aunts and cousins refuse to believe that their plagues of frogs and other disasters are due to anything more than natural causes.

As the curses grow increasingly life-threatening, Marianne tries to get help from the Castle, but Joe and Roger are too busy inventing magical machines, while Cat is distracted by learning to care for a semi-magical horse, Syracuse, and the baby griffin that hatches from the strange egg that Marianne innocently gives him. Much more is going on at the same time, including some deliberately malicious spellcasting, and it all escalates into a potentially lethal magical muddle (not unlike the Sorcerer’s Apprentice’s situation) before Chrestomanci steps forth to put things right and strip the powers from those who have misused their magic.

Those who have read Charmed Life will recognize many of the supporting characters, but The Pinhoe Egg stands nicely on its own as a humorous fantasy-mystery. The old-fashioned English village setting should be attractively exotic to American readers.