The Land of Ingary Trilogy (includes Howl’s Moving Castle)

Diana Wynne Jones's Land of Ingary Trilogy is three magical novels in one for 10 year olds, and it opens with Howl's Moving Castle.

What happens

In Ingary everyone knows the eldest of three sisters is the one who'll fail first. Sophie Hatter is the eldest, so she's settled for a quiet life trimming hats in the family shop. (She talks to them. They're good listeners.)

Then the Witch of the Waste sweeps in, takes a dislike to her and turns her into an old woman of about ninety. Worse, Sophie can't tell anyone she's under a spell.

So she does the only sensible thing. She packs some bread and cheese and hobbles off into the hills, towards the black castle that roams about above town puffing smoke. It belongs to Wizard Howl, who everyone says steals girls' souls (or eats their hearts, depending on who's gossiping). Sophie reckons she's far too old to interest him now, and it'll be warm inside.

That's the joy of reading Sophie. Being old seems to set her free. She waves her stick at the moving castle and shouts "Stop!" (it does). Then she barges past Howl's young apprentice, Michael, and settles herself in the best chair by the fire.

She's funny company too. She chats to hats, to a scarecrow she props up in a hedge and to her own walking stick. And there's a real puzzle building from the very first chapters, with two sisters secretly swapping places, a prince gone missing and a wizard nobody has actually met.

The other two books take you to new corners of the same world. In Castle in the Air, a young dreamer called Abdullah falls for a sultan's daughter who's then snatched away. In House of Many Ways, a girl called Charmain is left minding a wizard's cottage whose single door opens onto all sorts of places.

Sophie's father dies suddenly in the first chapter, and her mother died when she was two. Both are dealt with quickly, but a sensitive reader might want to know they're there.

If your reader likes magic with a wicked sense of humour, and heroines who get braver the grumpier they get, this is a big and very satisfying chunk of reading.

What to read next

When they've finished, The Islands of Chaldea is another Diana Wynne Jones adventure, about a girl who's sure her magic has let her down and who sets off on a rescue mission with her aunt.