How to Ruin a Great Author? Ask Hollywood to make a movie on their book!

What is magic? You may think that magic can be a number of things, that magic can turn everyday objects into objects that can do human-like things, making the impossible possible. Humans can fly, polar bears can travel through time, and ducks can run for president. But magic is not that, is it? Do you think that you can define magic? Do you think that it can be whatever you want it to be? Well, you would be dead wrong. Now let me guess your answer – you would say that it is how far you can stretch your imagination, right? Again, you’ve never been more off-base.  Magic is not what all you kids see in Harry Potter: owls delivering messages, people flying in the air on broomsticks, and being able to change something with a wave of the wand, with a scattered brain. There are two types of magic. Black magic and white.  Black magic is the complete opposite of white magic. It causes death, sorrow, and pain. If you consider the beauty of the world, the symmetry of the pyramids, the mysteries of the tomb, and the inherent unity between the microcosm and the macrocosm, what do you find? The opposite, yet, a misuse, an abuse, and manipulation of the secret laws of the world for one’s own personal gain, at the expense of others. Doesn’t this pretty much define the Izards?

There is no such thing as a magical mirror (or is there?) and these usually only occur in fiction. Magical mirrors have been in some of the greatest literature and can serve different purposes. In The Lord of the Rings there is a pool of water with a magical mirror in it, in a raised bowl. Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass also has a mirror (hence the title) that is magical and one of the most iconic mirrors of them all. In Harry Potter a magical mirror was used to protect the sorcerer’s stone. But what makes Uncle Jonathan’s coat rack mirror different? Well, Uncle Jonathan is an amateur magician: as he says, “If you mean that I wouldn’t be too bad at wizarding… well, I don’t know. I’m pretty much of a parlor magician, though I have a few tricks that go beyond rabbits and playing cards.” Later, he differentiates himself from the more mature worker of magic in hearing proximity: “And just to make you perfectly secure, let me inform you that Mrs. Zimmerman is also a wizard, though in her case the term should be witch.”

“At first Lewis had thought that it was just an ordinary coat rack. It stood about six feet high, and it had a little round mirror on the front. There were pegs for coats and hats, and there was a little wooden compartment in the front for rubbers. It looked very ordinary. But one day when Lewis was hanging up his raincoat, he looked at the mirror and saw a Mayan step pyramid in a steaming green jungle.” Lewis has stumbled upon a mirror that looks normal on the outside but really is magical. Bellairs’s book seems to fit into that category. Except it doesn’t. If you read between the lines you’ll notice that Bellairs is a different type of magic all together. His magic is not what you want it to be. In the mirror Lewis sees a pyramid. This may look this way for Lewis but may not be for others. This might be similar to the Harry Potter mirror but Bellairs enchants you in a different way than JK Rowling does. She enchants you with wand and dragons – Bellairs doesn’t summon you with wands but makes you want to know how his magical objects develop. His house is filled with all sorts of objects that seem to have a mind of their own. Or is it Uncle Jonathan’s mind?

Most people define magic as pulling a bunny rabbit out of a hat and then doing a silly little trick like making a card disappear and that sort of thing. You know that it isn’t real and that they have some sort of reason they could hide it. But what if they did it without touching the card? What would you do? Just ask Lewis Barnavelt. You guys would be confused together. “For one thing, he could have sworn that once or twice when he was reaching out to turn over a card that had been dealt to him, the card had changed. And more than once he had been about to throw in a hand when, after a second look, he discovered that the hand was a good one.” His cards kept magically changing and he kept on winning. He was bewildered, and this was his first night at Uncle Jonathan’s house! Being able to change the cards to what you want will lead you all away to the World Series of Poker. Uncle Jonathan is a low-tier magician and owns a number of magical objects. When Mrs. Zimmerman, Lewis, and himself are playing poker, Lewis is the only one who the cards are changing for. Why is this? Is it just dumb luck? Is Uncle Jonathan making it so that the magical cards benefit Lewis? Would he risk scaring Lewis by changing the cards? Or do the magical objects have a mind of themselves? And finally, is this white magic or black?

Lewis is given the luxury of being able to tinker with white magic and has been given the strict orders of not to anything with Uncle Jonathan’s serious magic books. But does Uncle Jonathan ever instruct Lewis in magic? Ah, if you saw the movie, you would gleefully say yes. But according to the book, you would be… dead wrong. Again.

The odd thing is that black magic needs white magic to exist and vice versa. If you ever read the Harry Potter series, it is like Harry and Voldermort. One cannot live without the other. They are a part of each other. Harry Potter works in white magic and Voldermort works in black magic. They are so different yet so the same. Lewis makes a grave mistake by getting too close to the line of what separates white magic and black magic. Lewis has the same intentions as Uncle Jonathan, to make sure evil wizards don’t take over the world. But what is so different about Uncle Jonathan and Lewis? Lewis is a kid. At age ten his brain is not nearly developed enough, and (even like most teenagers) he doesn’t fully weigh his decisions. Lewis has no intention of summoning Selena Izard from the dead, but accidently does so. This, unfortunately, is very easy to do.

Lewis is undereducated about magic and is yet surrounded on all sides by it. He wants Tarby to be his friend and is trying to impress him. This turns out terribly for him. “Then, for some reason, he picked up the chalk.” Where was he? Well, he and Tarby were in the graveyard of the town at the Izard tomb. And what was he doing? He was using a very powerful book of Uncle Jonathan’s: Necromancy by Dr. John Dee (who was the court astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I) to cast one of the most evil spells in black magic. “Slowly, carefully, he spelled out a name. The funny thing was that he was not thinking of a name at all. It was if someone else was guiding his hand. With one last down-stroke of the chalk he competed the word: Selenna. It was a strange name. Lewis had never known anyone called Selenna.” Lewis is lost and wounded. His parents died and he doesn’t know what do. He ignorantly decides to try to raise an Izard out of the dead and completes the Izards’ plan. What was their plan? To have someone like Lewis come and do it for them. They had all the things set up and needed someone to complete it, and complete it Lewis did. Lewis fit the bill perfectly because he was vulnerable and was in pain, and was the fatherless and motherless ward of his Uncle Jonathan, a confirmed bachelor, who, despite how he acts like he’s not a good wizard, is powerful in his own special way. Parents, naturally protective, have a better sense than Uncle Jonathan about dangers. Opposites attract. Something very good and very bad can seem miles apart but are really closer together than anything else.

John Bellairs is the author of The House with a Clock in its Walls and many other books in the series. He was born in Michigan in 1938. He attended the University of Chicago and Notre Dame. Then he went on using the knowledge he acquired from his lifetime to write books including the Lewis Barnavelt series. But what is the most common magical object known to all? A wand, or a cane. Do you think Uncle Jonathan, even though he is not such an advanced magician, has no cane? Well, you’d be wrong. Uncle Jonathan’s cane is not your normal everyday cane that grandpas use to walk. It is a magical object that has a life of its own. John Bellairs describes the cane as topped by a “faintly glowing gray globe.” Uncle Jonathan is an amateur magician and is not very powerful, yet he stills uses a magic cane. It is fitting.  The cane is like an animal it adapts to its owner.

Let’s be honest here. 67 rotten tomatoes is not the best. That’s what The House With the Clock in its Walls got. Why can’t Hollywood put in the same amount of effort as the authors do? They really are in it for the money. I have advice to anyone who watched the movie and hasn’t read the book. First, read the book. Second, if you are too lazy or can’t for any reason read it I would forget everything about the movie and borrow the book. The movie was a shadow of the book.

An object from the movie that in no way related to the book was the topiary lion made out of leaves. It was not in the book and the main purpose of it seemed to be pooping in the backyard. The lion basically comes up two times in the movie: one, when it takes a dump in the backyard, and another when it gets possessed and tries to eat its hosts. A swing and a miss from Hollywood, strike one. The next magical object in the movie that was not in the book: the jack o’ lanterns. The jack o’ lanterns were also possessed by Isaac Izard and tried to kill Jonathan, Lewis, and Mrs. Zimmermann. Mrs. Zimmermann saved the day by using her wand, but there was really no story behind any of the objects. The jack o’ lanterns were fun but were only shown maybe once or twice, so Hollywood fouls off the pitch, strike two. The last magical object is the possessed dummies (basically every object is possessed by who knows who) and Uncle Jonbo and Lewis too try and kill them too. All the toys gang up together and reminds one many bad movies, including of the trailer for the movie Goosebumps… because of those voodoo dolls. Hollywood strikes out looking! That’s the ballgame.