A Wizard Alone

by Diane Duane

Book Overview

While Nita grieves over her mother's death, Kit tackles a challenge as dangerous as it is strange: Rescue a young wizard who has vanished on his first assignment. This new wizard is unlike any... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0152045627
• ISBN13: 9780152045623
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace and Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 10 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 7

Customer Reviews

A Wizard Alone

This series of books are great for people of all ages! It deals with real life problems along with fantisy ones. Each book keeps you on the edge of your seat and ready to read the next one! My kids love it when I read these books to them!!

Autism to the Nth Degree!

Although I was never a fan of the science fiction/fantasy genres, I loved this book. The young wizards were appealing characters who reside in very real Nassau County New York communities. Each wizard is introduced to readers, so people who have not read the previous works in this series won't feel like they have to play catch up to understand the flow of the story. Kit, the wizard who is featured most prominently in this book discovers his beloved dog Ponch has some wizardlike properties. Boy and dog are able to communicate in ways they had never previously been able to do. Nita, another young wizard in their midst is still grieving over the death of her mother, whose life was prolonged thanks to Nita's magical prowess. Enter Darryl. A boy with severe autism, Darryl faces severe communication challenges and is enrolled in a self-contained program in a local Nassau County School. Kit finds himself in the mind of this child, whose speech is limited at best, sporadic at worst. He discovers Darryl mulls things over from different perspectives; changes his mind frequently; is highly imaginative as his mental imagery will attest to. Along with this information, Kit learns of the dark powers of the challenging forces of the Lone Power who threatens their very safety. Darryl has prescient dreams; this is a characteristic many of Stephen King's characters have. Darryl's autism is presented in a plausible and sympathetic fashion; although this book does not purport to be any kind of a diagnostic tool, it is delightful to see a wizard with autism and to see autism portrayed in a very different genre. Kudos to Duane for presenting autism in a logical and accurate fashion. This book is beautifully and brilliantly written to include autism in a very different context. I really like the way Kit's mother provided him with reading materials about autism and described it as best she could. I thought it was a lovely act of grace on her part to allow Kit to take a day off from school so he could study autism with the idea of helping Darryl.

Young Wizards Alone

In the previous book in this series, "A Wizard's Dilemma," the focus was on Nita (Juanita) Callahan, while Kit (Christopher) Rodriguez became more of a supporting character to Nita's activities. In this, the sixth book in the series, Diane Duane has Kit take the leading role with Nita initially in the background. In the previous book Nita worked very hard to save her mother's life. Nita managed to prolong her mother's life as she fought cancer, but ultimately her mother succumbed. The opening of this book finds Nita morose and grieving and Kit is temporarily without his partner. It turns out magic has been rubbing off on Kit's dog Ponch, who has developed some interesting magical abilities of his own. Kit works to discover the extent of Ponch's powers and the meaning of Ponch's powers. While Kit is trying to figure out Ponch's powers he finds himself in the mind of Darryl, an autistic boy. Darryl's mind is a continually changing and often surrealistic landscape of themes and imagery, often confusing, always fascinating to Kit. Kit discovers that Darryl is in an intense and long-running battle with the Lone Power, a battle in which the Lone Power is extremely vicious and vindictive, for reasons that Kit will eventually need to discover. While Kit and Ponch are learning about Ponch's abilities and Darryl, Nita has strange and sometimes bizarre dreams. It takes some time for Nita and Kit to discover that Kit, Nita and Ponch are all interacting with Darryl. The trio eventually discover that Darryl has the Lone Power under control, but Darryl need not keep battling the Lone Power and Kit and Nita can show Darryl how to end the battles. This book looks at autism from a very interesting and unique viewpoint and describes the world as an autistic person might perceive it. Diane makes a very good attempt to describe a poorly understood condition, and the results make very good reading. While many of the books in this series stand alone, this book would suffer from the lack of background. At the very least I recommend reading the first book in the series, "So You Want to Be a Wizard," preferably the second book in the series, "Deep Wizardry," and the fifth book in the series, "A Wizard's Dilemma." However, I also recommended in my review of the latter book reading "A Wizard Abroad" prior to reading that book. The only book in this series that adds little background information is the third book, "High Wizardry." Enjoy!

A Wizard and His Dog

This is the second of two parts dealing with the sickness and death of Nita's mom. Nita's family has pretty much shut down in the wake of her mother's passing and each is going through grieving in their own way. For Juanita, she has withdrawn into her own shell and lost much of the energy and drive that was her trademark up until now. She is keeping Kit at arm's length and avoiding wizardly assignments. This is doubly hard on her wizard friend who not only misses companionship and support, as well as desperately wanting Nita to feel better. Kit (and Ponch the universe traveling wonder dog) has his hands full when he is asked to investigate the case of Darryl McAllister, a young Wizard who has gone on his ordeal, and is very late completing it. It's not that Darryl has come to harm, it's simply that his quest may be stuck. What Kit doesn't expect is that Darryl is a very special child. In the mundane world, he is autistic, and Kit has no idea how to communicate with him. Kit, suffering from his inability to help Nita, throws himself into trying to fix Darryl's problem. In doing so he may very well endanger himself. Nita, experimenting with lucid dreaming, finds herself in contact with a strange character that may appear as a knight, a robot, or even a clown. She too experiences communication problems that cause her to expand her knowledge of the speech. What she finds is that her experiences and Kit's may be related. And that Darryl may be considerably more than he seems - a wizard with special powers locked in a struggle with the Lone Power. By some odd coincidence, this is the second novel in a row where one of the main characters has been autistic. While Diane Duane doesn't do a deep dive into the psychology involved, she manages to capture the essence of at least one variety of autistic experience. For all the participants, communication is the abiding theme of the book both for self-understanding as well as for reaching out to others. As such, A Wizard Alone is a touching story on many levels. This and The Wizard's Dilemma are both emotionally difficult reading, but I feel they do an excellent job of making that difficulty understandable.

A Wizard Alone reveiw

A Wizard Alone Diane Duane Copyright 2002 Price 6.95$ ISBN# 0-15-204562-7 Doug Dimmydome Gr.9 Red Wing High School Red Wing MN 333 pages Are you looking for a book with action adventure and some drama than Diane Duane's book A Wizard Alone is right for you. I loved it so much with its creative characters interesting story line and wonderful depth. Book 6 in the So You Want to be a Wizard Series and in my opinion the best one so far. Becoming a wizard isn't easy. In fact, it can kill you. All first-time wizards must go through an iniation in magic called an ordeal. Most last only a few days. So why has Darryl McAllister been on Ordeal for three months? Or has he Darryl hasn't actually gone anywhere. His body is still here; it's his mind that seems to have departed. And that's where Kit and Nita come in. Only together, can they unravel the mysteries around Darryl - who he is what he is, and why the source of all death in the universe, the Lone Power, is desperately trying to destroy him.