Red Wizard

Seventh-grader Ryan is whisked from his world into a fantasy kingdom by an incompetent wizard trying to find the perfect color red, but the mistake may avert a crisis with a rebel warlock and help Ryan solve a problem with his own father.

Grade 4-7-- This fantasy explores the idea that characters can be analyzed in an algebraic equation regardless of time or space. Ryan Dewitt runs away from his parents and is summoned from present-day to a wizard's hut somewhere in an alternate world. Aloysius Persyvaunce, the bumbling wizard, is a colorist seeking a true red; Ryan appears clutching a red crayola (unheard of in that world). When the crayon is stolen, the wizard and the boy travel to the wizard's college to see if the talisman can be reclaimed and used to send Ryan back to his own world. Through his experience, Ryan has learned to like himself. As a result, he is able to communicate with his parents, and his father comes to see his son truly and clearly, thus reuniting a happy family, dysfunctional no more. Readers irritated by high fantasy buzzwords (ensorcelled, grandwizard, and names such as Tarq and Durnor) will find the plot too conveniently contrived to be satisfied with the psychological working out, and those expecting a good fantasy will find this pale. Springer's style is self-consciously overwritten, but some of her color imagery is pleasingly original, and she gets in some pretty clever puns. --Christina L. Olson, Beverly Hills Public Library
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