Octagon Magic by Andre Norton

A wonderful book. It is one of Norton’s ‘Magic Books’ and is a reprint by Starscape Books (TOR) who are reprinting all of the Magic series of books.

Lorrie Mallard has been forced to live with her aunt in the US after her Canadian grandmother takes ill. She is very unhappy until she finds her way to Octagon House and Miss Ashmeade. The lessons Lorrie learns about herself and life are lessons young people can learn from. Lorrie grows and learns throughout the novel.

This book is a marvellous life lesson teaching tool and to that end Starscape has included three pages of discussion topics and questions at the end of the story. With Norton’s writing ability it is accessible to the young reader (but flows beautifully so as to pull inn the older reader). For teachers, you have in this novel both a wonderful read (hopefully encouraging more reading) and a point from which to begin talking about the choices young people face about their behaviour, how their behaviour affects themselves and others and how the should be deciding and behaving.

Highly recommended and a great addition to the books available for juvenile readers. A fun, worthwhile read for the older reader as well.