So there is little to date the story in that sense. The author has focused on universal themes of family, friendship, and "the ties that bind", which are all as vital and important now as they were 33 years ago. Probably the most important aspect of the book is that it stands the test of time. So, of course, having somehow mysteriously missed reading this book when it first came out, or subsequently (despite hearing so many good things!), I was determined to read the re-release - and I am telling you about it right now, dear Supernatural Undergrounders, because I loved it!
It is now regarded as a classic of supernatural Kids/YA fantasy and is currently being made into a film, with the great (UK actor) Timothy Spall as the bad guy-or bad demon, as is in fact the case.ģ3 years after first publication, The Changeover is still very much in circulation but has also been re-released by Hachette ahead of the film coming out. As the story unfolds, she comes to understand more about the complexities of life and love and sex and romance and happiness and sorrow in the grownup world on whose threshold she bides.First published in 1984, Margaret Mahy's The Changeover won the Carnegie Medal (for Children's and YA fiction) in the same year. Fourteen year old Laura copes with school, her three-year-old brother, her mother's job that doesn't pay very well so they're chronically short of money, and life after her parents' divorce.
It's a good story, too, and a very fine coming-of-age tale. It has a quality that I associate with Mark Helprin's, except toned down and blended in enough with more ordinary prose that it enhances, rather than dominates, the story being told.
The style is reminiscent of Madeline L'Engle, maybe Lois Lowry or Edith Nesbitt. The plain language of the book's description doesn't do justice to the evocative language describing even the humdrum details of Laura's ordinary life in the outskirts of a city in New Zealand, even before magic starts to creep in round the edges.
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