The ogre downstairs will be wasted if it is not accorded the widest possible readership—not that young readers won't ap-Diana Wynne Jones 1934– Courtesy of Diana Wynne Jonespreciate it but their elders should not miss it either. Like E. Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones uses magical events as a way of revealing character; by the way people react to extraordinary happenings you see what they are like and how they change. Here are two families faced with the need to unite and fiercely resenting it. When Mrs. Brent married Jack Macintyre, her children—Caspar, Gwinny and Johnny—found his sons Douglas and Malcolm unutterably stiff and stuck up, while the Macintyre boys thought the Brents noisy and uncivilised. Something had to be done, but the dour martinet whom his stepchildren thought entirely worthy of the title of Ogre was as bewildered as their mother, who had been...