The Wizard

A zany wizard and his assistants are busy mixing a potion and casting a spell, dancing around a bubbling cauldron until someone disappears, in a magical wordplay adventure, accompanied by exuberant full-color illustrations. By the author of Old Devil Wind.

PreSchool-Grade 2?A lively wizard and his various assistants cast a spell, with much joy and playful mishaps along the way. The wizard briefly narrates: "I flip. I flop. I dee-dip. I dop." Schaefer's oil-paint illustrations match the musicality of Martin's brief, rhyming text. Each double-page spread is full of swirling motion and humorous activity. The wizard's assistants are an amusing bunch: a beetle, a rat, a toad, an owl, and a green gremlinlike creature. They engage in amusing antics as the spell progresses. The toad skis on bubbles (while the wizard slides and slips on soap skates); the beetle tightrope walks across the ping-pong net. As the spell nears completion, the scene gets even wilder, culminating in an appropriate final spread: "Poooooooof! I disappear!" At times the rhythm of the text can be lost as readers pause at each spread to peruse the details. It takes some time to take in all that's going on before getting to the second half of the rhyme on the next spread. Since most kids will want to read the book more than once, they'll enjoy spotting the details the second time around.?Steven Engelfried, West Lynn Library, OR
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Aided by his assistants--a frolicsome frog, an albino rat and a green gnome--a wizard prepares to cast a spell, reciting all the while. "I dance. I sing. I twinkle. I wing," he proclaims, maneuvering acrobatically around his workshop until he lands in his bubbling cauldron: "I disappear!" First-time illustrator Schaefer, working in glowing oils, makes the most of Martin's ( Old Devil Wind ) jaunty but minimalist rhymes, creating scenes so full of activity that they fairly zip off the page. The wizard, a weirdly plastic figure, makes stardust with glowing stars and a handheld cheese grater; is rated (e.g., "9.5"; "10") by his assistants on the fierceness of his growl; and plays ping-pong over his cauldron while a beetle uses the net as a high-wire. In other scenes, the rat surfs on a wave cresting in the cauldron and the frog skies down a hill of bubbles. A high-energy, if slight, romp, with an agreeably puzzling ending: Is the wizard's disappearance the accidental result of overexuberance, or the intended culmination of carefully orchestrated spells? Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The wizard is in his chamber, the cauldron is on the fire. Four assistants--a frog, a mouse, an insect, and a grimly appealing droog (a pea soup-colored assistant that looks like a cross between Marty Feldman and a chimpanzee)--engage the wizard in a series of games, accompanied by Martin's simple rhyming text (``I pong. I ping. I dong. I ding.''). The fun and games continue as the merrymakers swoop and dive and shuck and juke and slip and slide to a steady beat of words that feel like a spell being cast. A trace of menace enters the picture as an owl is trapped and hung above the black kettle. Then the wizard slips (he has been using soap cakes as skates), knocks open the door of the owl's cage (readers sigh with relief), and does a neat flip right into the hot pink bubbling potion. Fast as that, he's a goner. The illustrations, for all their gnarly, oil-on-linen texture, are nimble and riveting. Schaefer handles this potentially terrifying story with a light touch; suspense hangs in the air, but the characters are this side of scary. (Picture book. 3-8) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 3-6. Martin's wizard is not the traditional quiet thinker. He and his helpers (a collection of familiar animals and a green monster who serves as his laboratory assistant) are in constant motion: "I flip. I flop. I dee-dip. I dop." Unfortunately, the conjurer eventually falls into his own concoction and disappears. The sophisticated oil paintings beautifully show a wizard who's always lounging or lurching--a sort of benevolent elder in the middle of a pratfall, whom children will welcome back at every reread. Mary Harris Veeder