I noticed that this book filled a hole in my A Century of Books project. I found the images from the movie fascinating when it came out years ago. So, although I don’t often read children’s books, I got a copy from the library.
Sophie lives in a sort of fairytale world of wizards and spells and witches. Because she is familiar with fairy tales, she knows that as the eldest sister, she would fail at any attempts to find her fortune. It’s always the youngest who is successful. So, when the family fortunes falter, she agrees with her stepmother’s plan to apprentice in her hat shop, while one of her sisters is apprenticed to a baker and the other to an herbalist.
Sophie has a talent for trimming hats, but she is still finding life a bit dull until she has an encounter with the Witch of the Waste about one of her hats. The witch puts a spell on her and turns her into an old lady.
All the girls in the country are afraid of Wizard Howl, who lives in a moving castle. He is reputed to kidnap girls and steal their souls. But Sophie thinks the only way to throw off the curse is to get help from Howl. The castle is in the area, so she bangs on the door until Howl’s apprentice Michael opens it, and then she makes herself at home as a housekeeper.
Howl has imprisoned a demon in his fireplace to move the castle, so she makes a deal with the demon. If she can break his contract, he’ll break her spell.
Otherwise, things in the castle seem quite different than she expected.
I think some of the ideas in this novel are imaginative, but otherwise, it seemed as if everyone was running around aimlessly most of the time. There is a contract to be broken, for example, but Sophie and Michael only make one attempt to break it, and the rest just seems to happen. I’m sure children would find the novel fascinating, but to me it seemed too loosely plotted and could have been about half as long.
What? Me Read? 