You know the story: boy discovers there’s a world of witches and wizards, where friends come in the forms of a courageous girls and aging professors, where sinister forces stir in ancient tombs and only he, riddled with self-doubt from behind his glasses, can stop them.
You do realize I’m not talking about Harry Potter.
It’s Lewis Barnavelt, obviously. You know, by John Bellairs? Wait, YOU DON’T KNOW JOHN BELLAIRS?
My inner eleven-year-old gets a little defensive about Bellairs, because he’s my J.K. Rowling.
Bellairs’ The House with a Clock in Its Walls is my Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. The book where I, as an awkward, inhaler-puffing, glasses-wearing kid, found a hero who sounded a whole lot like me, struggling to find his place in a ever-frightening world.
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The House with a Clock in Its Walls
I am not suggesting that Rowling at all ripped off any ideas from my boy John. Because criticizing J.K. in my house, where my daughters constructed Quidditch brooms out of pool noodles from the Harry Potter day camp they just attended, is blasphemy. Rowling conjured her own world and every detail is original and we will fight you if you disagree.
But make no mistake: Bellairs paved the way, and I won’t be satisfied until a global “John Bellairs Day” is declared by the U.N.
Let me rein it in a bit and explain why. I owe a lot to Bellairs, not only for writing the books that gave me so much comfort and thrills as a child, but for also implanting how fear should not be rejected or stymied, how it is important to development and a vital catalyst for courage.
Bellairs does this masterfully in House. The anxiety for his ten-year-old protagonist, Lewis, is revealed in the very first sentence, describing him fidgeting and wiping his sweaty hands on a 1948 bus seat. Orphaned by a terrible car accident that killed his parents, he is on his way to a new state to live with his uncle Jonathan, whom he had never met.
At about the same age as Lewis, I read the book when I too was leaving the only life I had ever known. My father had lost his job, and my brother and I were shuffled downstate to rural Southern Illinois. While not nearly as catastrophic as Lewis’ journey, I was still a nervous wreck.
By the second page of House, Lewis thinks, “Where am I going? Who will I meet? Will I like them? What will happen to me?”
How often have we all experienced those thoughts; after a shattered marriage, a demotion, or a medical diagnosis.
Young Lewis’ journey does not get easier, as he enters his uncle’s life in a gothic mansion that hides a secret so dark that it could spell the end of the world.
Although he is warned by his Baptist aunts that Uncle Jonathan smokes and drinks and plays poker (therefore instantly likeable in my view), Lewis quickly learns the truth about him: he is a warlock, and his eccentric next door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmerman, is a witch.
I won’t ruin the plot of what unfolds next, for that would ruin the fun. But it’s important to reveal Lewis’ struggles throughout.
Sadness over the loss of his parents. Ostracized for being the self-described fat kid who can’t play baseball. Jealously over an athletic, thinner friend that results in a terrible mistake that awakens evil. And not just a spooky evil, but a truly dangerous, deadly evil.
Lewis doesn’t face it all with unbridled courage and bravery. He stumbles, he fails and weeps and cowers.
He also learns he is not alone in his trials. Uncle Jonathan is more than just his caretaker and becomes the foundation Lewis so desperately needs. Miss Zimmermann, with her wrinkles and tight bun, is a powerful defender. And when Lewis experiences an act of cruelty by a friend, he then discovers the tomboy Rose Rita, whose courage is displayed in the books to come.
Fear is never truly conquered. Our heroes, at the end, are described as wearily going off to bed. It is an ever-present part of life, faced page by page.
In the world before Harry Potter, Bellairs provided books that carried the same themes. Magic is very much real, but so are the social challenges, from bullies to isolation, always told from children navigating strange, uncertain times.
Bellairs continues this theme with other characters in different stories, but always links his young protagonists with older caretakers, either as friends or family members. Prior to Harry and Professor Dumbledore, Bellairs created the friendship between Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass in The Curse of the Blue Figurine.
I think Bellairs and Rowling were on to something. Both writers often eliminate parents from the narrative, driving right to the relationship between children and senior citizens. There’s something about pairing wary kids with world-weary adults that introduce, often with hesitation, that magic is real, but not without consequences.
Imagine my delight in seeing that what looks to be a top notch film adaptation of House is set to be released this year, featuring actors that often guarantee a well-made film, including Cate Blanchett and Jack Black.
Hopefully, it introduces a whole new generation of fans to Bellairs’ works. While there may be new releases of the novel as tie-ins to the film, I secretly hope everyone scrounges for the versions I still keep on my bookshelf, in which the brilliant Edward Gorey drew the interior artwork.
My eleven-year-old daughter is chomping at the bit for more of what she devoured in Harry Potter. So with an eyebrow raised and a wicked smile, channeling my best Uncle Jonathan, I handed her my copy of House, thinking of what he said to Lewis as they were about to enter the mansion for the first time.
“Come on. Let’s go in. Don’t be bashful. It’s your house now.”
Jeremy Finley’s investigative reporting has resulted in criminal convictions, hearings before the U.S. Congress, more than a million dollars paid out to scam victims, and the discovery of missing girls. He is the chief investigative reporter for WSMV-TV in Nashville, TN, where he lives with his wife and daughters. His first speculative thriller, The Darkest Time of Night, will be released on June 26.
Yes.
Bellairs is amazing and highly underrated; his warmth, humanity and his New Zebedee/ Hoosac books has a magic Midwest that is as wonderful as Bradbury’s. Plus, anything that tells kids about John Dee, Symbolist art and cider donuts is beautiful.
I haven’t tried these books yet I read Diane Duane, and David Eddings as a kid. I’m willing to give them a go I recognized the book from the trailer and am waiting for my turn on the hold list. I think I might start some Diane Wynn Jones while I wait because some how I missed those too when I was younger.
YES to all of this. I LOVE Bellairs’ books. They’re so gothically spooky (even more so with the fantastic Gorey artwork). They scared the crap out of me as a kid! My personal favorite is Spell of the Sorceror’s Skull, though there’s one with a proto-Dementor in it that will literally suck your face off, but I can’t remember which book it’s in. I love how dark some of the stories get.
I REALLY want this first film to be massively successful so that the rest of the books make it to the big screen.
I didn’t read The House with a Clock in Its Walls until I was in college, but it’s become one of the books I go back and re-read at least once every year–usually around Halloween. My version is a more recent reprint, but thankfully it still has Gorey’s illustrations, which add a lot to the book’s already awesome, eerie atmosphere.
I first encountered Mr. Bellairs with the 1981 reprint of his The Face in the Frost novel about the wizards Prospero (“not the one you are thinking of”) and Roger Bacon. I then tracked down The House with a Clock in Its Walls, and have since inflicted it upon my younger relatives when they reach Lewis’s age or so.
@5. I first encountered Mr. Bellairs with the 1981 reprint of his The Face in the Frost novel about the wizards Prospero (“not the one you are thinking of”) and Roger Bacon.
This is one of my all-time favorites. It’s funny, and genuinely unsettling, and Prospero has the best wizard’s house ever. While the descriptions of evil sorceries are creepy, the book’s horrors are not only supernatural:
“We’re going over to the north to burn that town… Bow…what’s its name?”
“Bishop’s Bowes,” said the innkeeper. “Why are you doing this?”
“We’ve finally figured out what’s going on. Town’s full of evil people. Witches. I have an order here from Duke Harald to burn it to the ground. Here, look at it. Not that you have anything to say in this.”
He unrolled a long parchment that trailed lead and yellow wax seals on twisted strings of skin. The signature, a cross with a letter on each point, was so large that it covered a quarter of the page.
“They deserve it, too,” the leader went on. “You’ve seen the things. Half the people in Wellfont are afraid to go down into their own cellars. Shadows moving, screams from kettles when there isn’t any fire. Well, a little fire’ll teach ‘em. A couple of my men are out getting wood for torches. Do you have any pitch?”
“In the basement. I use it on the roof.”
“That’s fine. We’re going to use it on the roof, too.” He laughed, spitting flecks of brown beer on the muddy floor.
*SHUDDER*
I loved this series as a (also shy, chubby and unathletic) kid and am always surprised that more people haven’t read them.
@5. & @6. You beat me to it. I’m in the, “Several centuries (or so) ago, in a country whose name doesn’t matter, there was a tall, skinny, straggly-bearded old wizard named Prospero, and not the one you’re thinking of, either”, club also.
I love John Bellairs and The Face in the Frost is my favorite Bellairs book, maybe my favorite book period (definitely in the top 10). Prospero and Roger star in one on the best combination road trip/buddy film/horror/apocalypse/comedies around. Go ahead, read that again, I’ll wait. Now get the book, pour a drink, and enjoy. I think I’m gonna do the same thing.
@5 and @8. Bellairs started writing a sequel to TFitF, “The Dolphin Cross”, which was lost until it was published in an omnibus edition titled “Magic Mirrors: The High Fantasy and Low Comedy of John Bellairs”.
I recommend it highly!
@9. I did not know that, thank you. Off to go spend more money on books;)
“House” is one of the books I distinctly remember receiving as a present. I adored it. I reread “The Face in the Frost” frequently. Not only is his use of language fantastic (“He fribbled away the day with mindless tasks like cleaning the ashpit of the fireplace and raising the ghosts of flowers”) and his characters wonderful, he apparently knew quite a bit of magical history. Michael Scott (Prospero’s teacher) was a 13th century astrologer. You make a Hand of Glory from a hanged man (the implications of which I did not catch as a kid). He had such an eye for creepy detail (one that has crept up on me over the years is when Lewis goes outside after dark and turns to go back into the house, only to see the shadows of branches and leaves as if it were mid-afternoon). I have a paperback edition of FitF illustrated by Marilyn French. I love the pictures and would love to live in Prospero’s house (complete with the hippo weathervane and the whiny snarfling sound it makes and the sarcastic magic mirror).
John Bellairs made headlights terrifying.