A Crafty Day for Wizards

What better remedy after a long morning trying to locate records for the tax man than to run to the craft store for supplies to open our own wizard's mint? Budza's BFF, the Divine Miss M., came over around one o'clock, and after I came back from our wonderful art supply store, Play Time Crafts, in Arlington Center, laden with Fimo, glitter, spell bottles with corks, phoenix feathers and lengths of wooden dowel for wands, they started rolling out metallic Fimo clay and making their own currency. There was a yard of sparkling green felt and some gold curtain rope to make money bags, and some parchment paper for making their own spellbooks. Miss M. is very good at writing Viking runes, and she says it's because she's already memorized the Hebrew aleph-bet.

We had a good time finding projects in The Book of Wizard's Craft, by Janice Eaton Kilby (Lark Books 2001), "in which the Apprentice Finds Spells, Potions, Fantastic Tales, and 50 Enchanting Things to Make." We can't wait to make the shrunken mandrake heads, but need to locate some alum first. Miss M. finally went home with a spell jar full of fairy wings and phoenix feathers, an emerald green felt reticle full of newly minted Queen M. money, a book of spells, a sparkly wand, and a feathered owl mask (feathers from our feather duster, quite a nice effect). What is great about Kilby's book is that it's the rare kids' craft book of things you can make (low cost, things you might actually have on hand) that you also WANT to make. My husband got apples and alum from the store, so tomorrow we might make the Mandrake Shrunken Heads.

Some great sites to check out for your own crafty wizard day:

Foe Viking runes, check out The Runic Journey, at http://www.tarahill.com/runes/index.html

T.H. White's The Book of Beasts, online at the University of Wisconsin. Good text for Magical Creatures 101.

Online exhibit at the University of Illinois website of alchemy books from 1500-1964, with lots of great woodcuts that would look way cool printed on some fake parchment paper.

Huge Alchemy web portal here.

There was a Merlin Festival in Wales in 2007, but I've been unable to find details for a 2008 festival. If I do, I'll post it.

A Real Alchemist

All the way up to our cabin in Maine, we listened to The Alchemist's Son: Dr. Illuminatus, by Martin Booth. It was a revelation to me. The book appeared in 2003, and it was my husband who checked out the audio version from the Boston Public Library main branch to take along on our trip.

The story is simple, and one used over and over again in British and American fantasy: children (in this case, siblings) take up residence in an Old House in the Country, and magic ensues. In this book, Philippa and her brother Tim move into a manor house and discover Sebatian, an alchemist's son, living in the walls, awakened from a kind of magical torpor. He's either 12, or 612, depending on how you calculate his age. He's got to stop a villain, DeLudeac (sp? sorry, this was an audiobook), from assembling all the parts he needs to make an army of homunculi.

The story is informed both by Booth's considerable knowledge of history, and how to use it in a story, his feel for magic (he does drawn-out creepy sequences loaded with Rising Dark in the same vein as Susan Cooper), and his great use of the skeptical brother, Tim, as a foil for the more introspective Pip. Pip finds a mysterious plant in the garden; Tim looks it up on the web. I was constantly brought up short by the fact that this felt like a classic, written a generation ago, except for its mentions of the Human Genome Project and the Internet.

A really enjoyable book: suspenseful, funny, humane and not a stray or unnecessary word in it. And don't you have to love any writer who introduces you to a noun like "ha-ha"? A book, and a writer, most highly recommended.

It wasn't until the final CD had finished and the copyright notice came on that we heard with dismay that it was registered to the "Estate of Martin Booth." He died in 2004, not yet sixty, and this was one of four books he wrote in the last year of his life. There's a partial list of his many fiction and nonfiction books for all ages at Fantastic Fiction, and an entry in Wikipedia.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/martin-booth/ The only trouble is, after reading the sequel to Dr. Illuminatus, where to start?

So here is to Martin Booth, alchemical writer, illuminating the dark with words.