Hello all. Sorry for not updating you with journals lately. I’ve been pretty busy with life and writing these last several months, some good and some bad. I still work in the deli, not because I haven’t been job searching, but because no one seems to wish to hire me. It’s rather frustrating for me since I want to get another job, one that’s actually done has the hours listed correctly (technically, I’m a part-timer, but I get full-time hours at the deli), but I’m not good enough.

In any case, time for a happier topic. One that’s the real point of this journal.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw an RT about a novel a guy read decades ago and still believes that it holds up. I’m not going to judge it as good or bad since I haven’t read the book in question. But it has got me thinking of a work that I do believe is underrated and one that I wish that more people read. That book is Black and Blue Magic by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

To give a basic synopsis, the protagonist is Harry Houdini Marco, a son of a stage magician who named him after one of the greatest stage magicians because he wished for his son to become one himself. However, even as a young kid, Harry has been a clumsy kid with the only thing going for him regarding magic is the word of The Great Swami, who prophesied that Harry, “has a rare gift, and his magic will be of a very special kind.” His father died years before the story began, leaving Harry, now twelve years old, and his mother living alone in their boarding house in California.

At the beginning of summer, which promised to be a boring, vacationless one, Harry encountered a traveling salesman, Mr. Tarzack Mazzeek, who is just as clumsy as Harry himself. After rescuing his lost suitcase, Mr. Mazzeek stayed at the Marco’s Boarding House for several days. At the end of his time there, late at night, Mr. Mazzeek revealed to Harry that he’s an immortal wizard, one who is forbidden to use his magic because of a curse that made him clumsy in the first place. In part because of gratitude for Harry for rescuing the suitcase (it held magical objects) and because his late father was under consideration to be given a real magical object himself, Mr. Mazzeek gave Harry an ointment that grants him wings whenever he rubs it against his back and says the enchanted words. All of a sudden, summer suddenly became a lot less dull.

While the synopsis doesn’t do it justice, it’s actually a surprisingly deep story for a book made for kids, one that has even me, who has become an adult when I first read it, love it. There are also sub-plots, some only appearing in the chapter they’re in and others throughout the book, that ties the theme of the book together: And out of Error–Good has Burst.

There are plenty of stuff to discuss within the book, one that I wish to put into this journal. But I believe that it would become more of an essay than a journal. All I can say is: Read it for yourself. Here is the link on Amazon for your convenience.

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Magic-Zilpha-Keatley-Snyder/dp/1504035607