Take Tea With Charlie, Wait For Harry

Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo

Dear Saralinda:*

There are some books that simply beg to be compared to their predecessors. Midnight for Charlie Bone is one of them. You simply can't help but compare it to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. They have so much in common it is almost painful:

A young boy has always felt like a misfit and has never met his dad, who died in strange circumstances.

A young boy suddenly discovers that he has magical powers and therefore must go to a special, private, boarding school.

The students at the school are divided into "good guys" and "bad guys."

The students get into mischief and cause problems while ultimately winning out for the side of right and glory.

That said, Midnight for Charlie Bone does stand on its own and is not simply a quick rip-off. In fact, it is pretty darn good if you're willing to ignore all the stale similarities. Perhaps rather than degrading it to the status of a copycat, it would be better to say it is a solid new entry in an emerging genre, a genre created and currently dominated by the Potter books.

Besides, there are differences as well. The private boarding school that Charlie attends isn't hidden from public view, nor are all of the children "endowed." Even amongst those children with magic abilities, their talents are expressed in different ways. What they do have in common is that they are all descendants of the Red King, a legendary figure that we start to learn about in Midnight for Charlie Bone.

Charlie Bone, our protagonist, can hear people in pictures talking. The danger is that they can see him when he eavesdrops. Charlie Bone has been raised by his mother and his grandmothers. His mother and maternal grandmother are very poor and depend on the wealth and indulgence of his father's relations. These relations are all rather frightening and intimidating. They had ignored him for most of his life because he hadn't shown any signs of magical talent. When his gift does emerge, everything changes.

First, Grandma Bone enrolls him in Bloor's Academy, a creepy, dark place that fills Charlie with homesickness pangs. He is soon set on the track of a missing girl and learns that his father may not be as dead as he suspected. He also makes friends as quickly as he makes enemies.

I think you'll find the book to be a quick read-it is certainly shorter than the Harry Potter books and there are plenty of unusual characters and events to keep the story interesting. Author Jenny Nimmo creates very sympathetic characters in both Charlie and his best friend, Benjamin. We want to know what happens to them.

One of the books' weaknesses is that it tends toward the predictable. There is one major "mystery" that isn't resolved in this book. It's left for future novels, yet the solution to the mystery was so obvious that you're left rather amazed that Charlie hasn't figured it out. I also wonder why something so obvious was used as a tease to get you into the rest of the series.

The handling of magic is also interesting. Only a few of the characters have what we would consider traditional magic skills. The talents of others take odd forms-the feeling of emotions in objects, the ability to hear people, or the ability to create storms. Perhaps a more apt comparison than Harry Potter would be to the X-Men with their school for people with mutant abilities.

The next two books in the series are:

Charlie Bone and the Time Twister
Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy

I've got the next book in the series on hold from the library and I'm eager to see whether the series is able to grow from a solid start or whether it will rely on following a formula simply to cash in on eager readers waiting for their next fantasy installment.

Love,
Aunt Bridgette

*I've changed the name of my niece to protect her identity. Saralinda is a name I borrowed from another beloved children's book. She's the princess in James Thurber's The 13 Clocks.

--B. Redman