Have a young Harry Potter fan who is looking for a different wizard series to try? Check out Magyk (and its sequels) by Angie Sage. I met Angie Sage when she visited my classroom. (Man, I miss the author visits we had at my old school! We don’t get them at my current school.)
Title: Magyk
Author: Angie Sage
Genre: Fantasy
Age group: middle grade
Synopsis: Septimus Heap is the seventh son of a seventh son. On the night he is born, he is pronounced dead by the midwife who swiftly takes him away. On that same night, his father, a not-so-talented wizard named Silas Heap, finds a baby girl abandoned in the snow. Silas decides that he and his wife should adopt the baby girl, but Marcia Overstrand, the apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, warns him that he should not tell anyone where he found the girl. Thus, Silas and his wife decide they’ll tell everyone they had a baby girl instead of a boy. But who is this mysterious girl Silas found, and what really happened to their son Septimus who was carried off by the midwife?
Does it pass the “Homeschool Mom Test“? Obviously if you’re not a fan of the Harry Potter series because you think it will suddenly cause your children to study witchcraft, then this is not the book for you. (By the way, I’ve known hundreds of children who have read the Harry Potter series, and I haven’t met a single one who left his or her faith in order to practice witchcraft. Kids deserve more credit than we sometimes give them. If we’ve taught them well, they know a fantasy story when they read one.)
I’ve read only the first book in this series, but I found it to be a fun fantasy read, and I think any kid that enjoys Harry Potter will enjoy this as well.
