Contemporary children's fantasy has its own conventions and standards, often unacknowledged but recognized by those who write or publish fantasy. Diana Wynne Jones has built her reputation on challenging those conventions, standing them on their heads, a...

Diana Wynne Jones "is a prolific novelist of enormous range who can raise hairs on the back of the neck one minute, belly laughs the next," asserts Elaine Moss in the Times Literary Supplement. Jones not only creates mythical worlds peopled with wizards,...

Bill Keil In its continuing quest for raw material supplies, the large integrated US forest products company, Willamette Industries, recently bought some massive tracts of Pacific Northwest timberlands stocked heavily with western hemlock. The Foster mill producing plywood sheathing, underlayment and...

The native hemlock is one of the most beautiful plants in the garden -- and forest -- but its days are numbered. A pest with the comical name of woolly adelgid has proved to be no joke since its introduction from Asia in...