Simon Farnaby: The Wizard In My Shed (Hachette Children’s Group 2020)
Simon Farnaby: The Warror In My Wardrobe (Hachette Children’s Group 2021)
Simon Farnaby: The Wizard and Me (Hachette Children’s Group 2022)
Merdyn, the Wild, has already caused so much trouble in the Dark Ages that the people of Albion banish him to the stream of Purgatory. But the spell goes awry and Merdyn is thrown into the Stream of Time, which dumps him in 21st century Bashingford. Rose is an ordinary girl nowadays, who stands out from the rest only because she has a particularly good sense of embarrassing herself at school. Her only friend is Bubbles, the guinea pig. The two eccentrics are brought together by fate to turn the city, the world and each other’s lives upside down. However, they have no idea how good an effect they will have on each other.
Caution: if you read the book in company, the others may be surprised when you laugh out loud at a certain episode. (There will be many of such episodes.) I liked it much more than I expected: it is very funny, but it also has important things to say in the area of family bonding and environmental protection. I immediately read the additional volume published for World Book Day (The Wizard and Me), in which we can follow the events from Bubbles’ point of view, and then the second volume of the series, The Warrior In My Wardrobe.
The next adventure of the protagonists leads to the Dark Ages, which – as the book reveals – were not so dark: there was nothing to pollute the environment, so the air was as clean as nature created it to be. There were fewer people, but there were more forests… In this story, they have trouble with one of Merdyn’s old enemies, about whom I won’t tell you more, you should read the books instead! I have a feeling that there will be a sequel and I can’t wait to read it. The brilliant Hungarian translation is the work of Sándor Mátyás Bottka.
