Books with title The Wizard's Staff

Fourteen-year-old Jake is used to being on his own. He hasn't heard from his father since he was seven, and he doesn't really remember him. His mother has two jobs and night classes, so he is usually alone at home. The independence is nice, but he gets scared in the empty apartment, especially at night. Jake often goes alone to see his eleven-year-old sister, Sarah, who has early-onset schizophrenia and lives in a residence for severely disturbed children. He knows that his mother doesn't have much time, but it bothers him as she comes with him less often. He still holds out hope that a drug will come along to make Sarah okay.Besides Sarah, his closest friend is JT, a retired music teacher for whom he does errands and a few odd jobs. When she ends up with a half-wild, half-grown cat, Jake is immediately drawn to it. He is the first person to be able to pet the cat, who can't stay with JT and has nowhere else to go. Afraid his mother won't let him take the cat, he decides not to tell her, and smuggles Star into his room while she's at work.At JT's prodding, he starts writing down one of the stories he's thought up, a fairy tale about a teenage boy who must free his young childhood friend, now a queen, from a wizard's curse. Scenes and characters are inspired by events and people from Jake's own life. When Sarah gets worse and has to be hospitalized, Jake worries that she will never get better. Then he starts to fear that he is going insane, too.

After two long years Justin is finally able to return to the forest where he feels at home. Eager to see his best friend Karyn again, he barely notices that the once vibrant forest around him is dying. He finds his friends and family in the middle of a crisis that may result in the death of every creature in the forest. Justin volunteers to find a solution and is reluctantly joined by a rival for Karyn's affection, Zayn. Justin discovers that as the son of a half-wizard he has powers that he has never imagined. Will they be enough to help him save his friends? Or will his uncontrolled ability only serve to seal everyone's fate?

A lonely wizard moves to a new town in this charming children's story by renowned American poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, now in print again for the first time in decades.Everything is going wrong in the town of Drocknock until the new wizard arrives. He is very young, and he is lonely, and very nervous too; but he knows just where to find the right spells to stop the chicken pox epidemic and bring back the twenty cows that had disappeared. The drought is the town's most important problem, however. The new wizard needs five of his own tears to bring rain, but he is so happy in Drocknock he cannnot cry! "Peel an onion," the old wizard advises. "But," he warns, "beware, beware...a wizard's tears are powerful. They can make strange magic."..... The Wizard's Tears, first published in 1975, is moving and kind and funny in its intimate and modest way, yet strong and full of renewed life with stunning new illustrations from Keren Katz. Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin had been friends for several years--having met at and carpooled to a Boston poetry workshop--when they began writing books together for younger readers. The creativity and versatility required for children's books offered the two poets the opportunity to experiment and play with language in new, unexpected ways, to connect world and words with humble, powerful, childlike imagery--"not unlike writing a poem where compression acts to intensify feelings," as Maxine reckoned.

Kalbe, the wizard of Mazaar, had lived his life and was intent on a few years of solitude with his cat. Then there was that night when he observed the changing colour of the clouds and his comfortable existence ceased. Soon he was on a path that would lead him to the heart of darkness. Along the way he would discover hidden powers that would shake him to the core.

The blank wall in front of them seemed to dissolve, and a creature Peter had never seen before bounced through. It looked like a large rodent, but with six arms and one long leg shaped like a spring that ended in an enormous foot.‘A Haha!’ exclaimed Duncan.‘I wonder,’ began Cat pompously, ‘if you could tell us…’‘Help!’ squeaked the Haha, its expression distraught. ‘The Caretaker’s gone missing!’Duncan and Emma return to the Lost Land with a new friend, Peter, only to find that the Caretaker has vanished and the Land is in danger from a new and mysterious darkness. Can they save the magical world a second time? And will Peter be able to overcome his fears and play his part?

Harold Avery was born in 1869. His life reads like one of his own adventure stories. He was shipwrecked off the coast of Malaysia at the age of ten on his way to Australia with his parents who were drowned. Avery was brought up by the natives who, after three years put him on a Dutch boat bound back to England. He was brought up by an aunt who sent him to Eton and then settled with him in Edinburgh. Avery took a job in the city’s Water Department and in 1894 wrote his first book The Orderly Officer. In the next 45 years he wrote over fifty more books, mainly school stories and adventure stories. In 1941 he left Scotland to travel round the world and the last that was heard from him was a postcard sent to his aunt from Rio de Janeiro in 1943. This book, The Wizard’s Wand, was written in 1908 and is tantalizingly dedicated to ‘William Avery with his father’s love’, although Harold supposedly never married. It is chosen from his large output as being a typical school story but, it can be argued, it is the precursor of work by Enid Blyton and J K Rowling, dealing with school life, five children who go on an adventure and a mystical wizard who ends the story not with a wave of a wand but with kindness and consideration.