Kids into books: The Lives of Christopher Chant

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Illustrator: Tim Stevens

Publisher: Harper Collins, $14.95

Age Group: 8-12 years


Mama had huge lustrous eyes, a perfectfigure and piles of glossy brown curls. The nursery maids told Christopher Mama was a Beauty. At this stage in his life Christopher thought everyone's parents were like this; but he did wish Mama would give him a view of Papa just once.

He thought everyone had the kind of dreams he had, too. He did not think they were worth mentioning. The dreams lways began the same way. Christopher got out of bed and walked round the corner of the night nursery wall - the part with the fireplace, which jutted out - on to a rocky path high on the side of a valley. The valley was green and steep, with a stream rushing from waterfall to waterfall down the middle, but Christopher never felt there was much point in following the stream down the valley. Instead he went up the path, round a large rock, into the part he always thought of as The Place Between.

Christopher thought it was probably a left-over piece of the world, from before somebody came along and made the world properly.