So You Want to Be a Wizard

Nita Callahan, taking refuge in the library from bullies, checks out a book found in the children's section with the provocative title So You Want To Be a Wizard. On the way home, the bullies corner her, beat her up, and take a space pen given to her by her uncle. Before Nita goes to sleep, she takes the Wizard's Oath. The next morning she looks at her manual and sees her name in the wizards list.

She goes to a quiet place to work a pen retrieval spell, and meets Christopher "Kit" Rodriguez, also a new wizard. Kit is making a spell intended to surround him with an aura of fearlessness. Combining their intentions, they create a new spell, which presents a vision of an alternate Manhattan: polluted, lightless, and frightening. A terrible being composed of pure desire reaches up to consume them, and to escape, they open their minds to the universe - which ends up bringing an intelligent white hole from space. Translated into English and simplified, the white hole's name is "Fred".

The next day at school Fred and Nita attempt to retrieve Nita's pen from her bullies, but Fred miscalculates the gravity required to lift the pen from the bullies' possession, and instead accidentally swallows it. This makes Fred hiccup objects, including a television, a blue Mercedes, and a Learjet. After school, they seek help from the local Advisory Wizards. Fred's problem is fixed, but Nita's pen is not recovered. In order to retrieve it, they must link Fred to a worldgate in Grand Central Station and pull the pen out of Fred.

Fred also has some alarming news: a crucial book has gone missing. Called the Naming of Lights, it is a compendium of information that describes the true nature of everything that has or will exist. It is also known as The Book of Night with Moon because it can only be read by moonlight. Its shadow, The Book Which is Not Named, contains descriptions that are twisted out of their true patterns. If the Lone Power - the being of desire and hate sensed by Nita and Kit - were to read the shadow Book without the bright Book being read, the cosmos would be irreparably skewed.

In Grand Central, Nita and Kit find that the worldgate has been knocked out of place and is hovering above the station. Nita invokes the air to solidify into a walkway between the roof of the Pan Am Building and the gate, but before Nita can retrieve her pen, a pack of werewolf-analogues attack, causing Nita, Kit, and Fred to plunge through the worldgate.

On the other side, Nita's pen is lying on the floor of a building in an alternate New York City. The landscape is cold, dark and lifeless, populated by predators. Many resemble automobiles, but there are also glowing-eyed dun mice, batlike skinwings, and dragonlike fireworms. This world belongs to the Lone Power, a thing far worse than any devil and more ancient than the earth.

Nita, Kit, and Fred learn that the two Books are here, and that to get home they will have to read from the bright Book. To find the bright Book, they decide to steal the dark Book from the Lone Power, because they need the Bright Book's power to find the worldgate, which has been hidden in the darkness that the Lone Power has created. On their way to the Lone Power's office, Kit finds a racing car, a Lotus Esprit, beside its prey, a "dead" sedan, injured by a piece of metal lodged in its axle. Kit cuts this piece away, and the Lotus roars off, free.

Inside the building, Nita, Kit, and Fred eavesdrop on the Lone Power's phone call to the Archangel Michael. Michael suspects his brother stole the bright Book, while the Lone Power suspects him of sending Nita and Kit to steal it back. Nita and Kit have not previously considered this, but it begins to make sense.

Old City Hall subway platform

Nita steals the dark Book, and uses it to locate the bright Book in the tunnels under City Hall. Aided by the Lotus Esprit, who has returned to show its gratitude, they proceed to the tunnels, where they discover the Book is guarded by the Eldest of the fireworms. The Eldest - a dragon-like fire-breathing lizard - lies on a vast hoard of stolen gold, gems, silver plate, plastic toys, coins, and bones. The wizards bargain with the Eldest, giving it the dark Book in exchange for the bright Book, in addition to securing the hoard with a magical barrier.

The enraged Lone Power comes after them on the back of an eight-legged, skull-faced beast. They flee through the worldgate, and re-enter their homeworld with the Lone Power on their heels. To stop the Lone Power from destroying their Universe, Kit and Nita quickly enlist a wall of magically animated trees and statues around a refuge in Central Park, and begin to read from the bright Book by moonlight, to undo the changes that the Lone Power has been making during the pursuit.

The Lone Power then puts out the Sun, extinguishing the moonlight that is necessary to read from the Book. Fred sacrifices himself by "blowing his quanta", releasing all his mass as energy in the form of visible light, which, reflected by the moon, becomes moonlight by which the Wizards can continue reading. As Kit and Nita recite the Lone Power's true name, written in the bright Book, Nita makes a slight modification to the text (the symbol ⎋), giving the Lone Power the option to become a positive rather than a negative energy.

Renamed and vanquished, the Lone Power withdraws. Nita and Kit go home, their Ordeal complete.

One of the major themes in So You Want to Be a Wizard is the ability to extend sympathy and understanding to anyone, even enemies.[2] One excellent example of this takes place in the Other Manhattan. In this world, cars are alive, and when a Lotus Esprit kills another car, its prey, a piece of metal gets stuck in it. Upon finding the injured Esprit, Kit cuts out the piece of metal and the car zooms away. Later, when Nita, Kit, and Fred are attempting to find the dark book, the Esprit returns and offers the three of them a ride. It proceeds to assist them in finding the book and in protecting them from the Lone One.

This example shows how by offering sympathy and assistance to the car, who was originally Kit's enemy and would have attacked if it could, Kit received kindness in return.

Another theme is the balance between good and evil. In an interview with Harcourt Books, Duane writes

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong. Everyone has to deal with the choice with every breath, and it's so easy to fail at any moment, no matter how well you've been doing the moment before or may do the moment after. [...] Kids want to know (just as much as adults do, or more) how the hard choices look when they approach, and how to deal with them. "How shall a man do right?" has been one of the most basic human questions since long before Ecclesiastes. It turns up in the Book of the Dead and in old Hittite and Assyrian writings. I don't think I'd qualify as human if it didn't turn up in mine.[3]

So You Want to Be a Wizard is listed in What Else Should I Read? Guiding Kids to Good Books, Vol. 2 by Matt Berman as well as Rip-Roaring Reads for Reluctant Teen Readers by Gale W. Sherman and Bette D. Ammon.

So You Want to Be a Wizard has won the "ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers" award.[4]

• 1983, USA, Harcourt Trade Publishers ISBN 0-15-216250-X, Mass market paperback

• Entry at Young Wizards website
• Chapter One of So You Want to Be a Wizard at dianeduane.com