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


Formless slopes of rock towered and slanted in all directions. Some of it was hard and steep, some of it piled and rubbly, and none of it hadmuch shape. Nor did
it have much colour - most of it was the ugly
brownyou get from mixing every colour in a paintbox.

There was always a formless wet mist hanging round this
place, adding to the vagueness of everything.
You could never see the sky. In fact, Christopher
sometimes thought there might not be a sky: he had
an idea the formless rock went on and on in a great
arch overhead - but when he thought about it,
that did not seem possible.

Christopher always knew in his dream that
you could get to Almost Anywhere from The
Place Between. He called it Almost Anywhere,
because there was one place that did not want
you to go to it. It was quite near, but he always found
himself avoiding it.

He set off sliding, scrambling, edging across bulging wet rock, and climbing up or down, until he found another valley and another path. There were hundreds of
them. He called them the Anywheres.