It has been a while since I read a whimsical middle grade, so I was really looking forward to getting into this one. I had no idea what to expect other than magic and adventure and that’s pretty much exactly what it is.

When a flying house lands in Callie’s back garden late one night, she thinks she’s seeing things at first. However, it turns out that the house belongs to a magician named Winnifred has lost her Wanderdust, the substance that enables her magic to work. It’s down to Callie and her next door neighbour Sam to find the Wanderdust and save Winnifred’s house and possessions from the creatures trying to steal it.

Alice McKinley’s artwork is really cute and I would have loved to had the benefit of seeing it in colour beyond the cover. It’s simplistic yet full of little details, which really suits the writing style.

I thought the magic system was interesting but the heavy reliance on having a supply of Wanderdust diminished Winnifred’s powers. She didn’t really have any magic without it, which meant that it was potentially accessible to anyone. So, Winnifred wasn’t a magical character at all really -she just knew how to wield Wanderdust.

Callie has recently moved from London to the remote Northern Irish community that the story is set in and she is really struggling with homesickness. The idea of home becomes a big theme as the story goes on and drives the moving, reflective scenes.

The idea of home being people rather than places is something that really resonates with me and it was lovely to see Callie realise that at such a young age. Hopefully it will stay with the young readers that pick this book up too.

The Magician Next Door is a fun, quick, magical read. I would have liked the characters to have been developed more and the Irish influence to have been more prominent. I also wasn’t really sure about the reveal behind Callie’s mother’s link to the town and found that quite farfetched. However, I do think it’s a lovely story for children aged 8-11 to read as a starter magic story.

This was so canny! I really enjoyed all of the characters and their adventure! Will definitely be purchasing for my classroom… lots of my class will love this!

Callie is one of the typical girls in books like this – grieving for her deceased mother and angry that she has been moved, with her dad, from her home and friends in busy London to the silence and remoteness of Northern Ireland. There lives one potential new friend thereabouts, but as she's spent the summer moping in her bedroom that's not developed. But when a humongous noise brings her attention to the garden one night, she sees the results of someone else forcibly moved – a magician's house has landed in the garden. Well, I say landed – it's crash-landed, upside-down, and the magical mojo of the place has left it, which will result in the whole building and the magician inside losing everything within days. After all, it's not like Callie and the non-friend, Sam, are going to be able to help the magical Winnifred out, is it?

Now, there's two ways of approaching this. One is to state that it is far from perfect. The other is to admit that when it slumps down it's noticeable because it hits, and sustains, a pretty decent height elsewhere. At one point, about a third of the way in, it was a surprise to see, practically in front of my eyes, the text say "right, reader, that's the introduction done, here's what the thrust of the book will be". That didn't strike me as subtle, and seemed a bit late. A point much further on has the very likeable lead Callie capital-G Get the capital-M Message of it all, and yet that's still not too big a problem, however laboured it gets. Sure, her character arc, from timid loner to rope-climbing heroine is a bit too broad and swiftly covered, but again that isn't a heinous sin here.

What I found here was a concise, quickly-read (large print, much pictorial content, not too many pages all told) drama of some small renown. You'll recognise the girl-forced-from-home trope, but where she ends up is fine for this fantasy. The volume does not make sure it's a book about the Mountains of Mourne, where it's set, or Any Generic Land With Magic, but the piece is probably more relatable for practically forgetting its real-world setting for the greater part. So yes, once again I fall into my trope of filling negative boxes and yet not doing what I should be – lauding a more than reasonable story, that is more than able to intrigue the magically-minded young reader, with a very positive friendship formed through high action, showing high agency for our heroine. So for all the hiccups and issues and flaws you might see flagged up too much in the reading of this, it's definitely four star-worthy.

A fun adventure for younger readers as a house mysteriously appears next to Callie's house and she meets Winn, a witch losing her magic.

Winnifred is a magician with a problem: her flying house has crash-landed in the middle of the countryside. The negative energy emanating from a particular cottage has clashed with the mechanisms of magical house removal. A young girl called Callie is the source of such sadness that could bring down a house! In order to help rectify things for Winnifred before further disaster strikes, Callie must act courageously, facing a series of increasingly perilous events, and confront her emotions bound up with layers of loss.

I loved the use of setting as intrinsic to much of the story-telling: the Mourne Mountains have their own magic long before Winnifred manifests! Winnifred’s house literally plunging from the sky and opening up this intrusion into Callie’s isolation. I enjoyed the quirky magical gadgets- “an invisible-intangible-imperceptibly charm” has got to be a plot device of any writer’s dreams! 😂

The Magician Next Door features a child living with grief and looking for a new sense of belonging and as such, amongst the giggles, there are some lovely, tender moments of reflection and lots of life-affirming messaging.


I read this before its publication date on NetGalley.

If you're looking for something more fantastical, then this is the book for you. As with Rachel Chivers Khoo's first chapter book, The Wishkeeper's Apprentice, this has the magical and traditional feel of the stories I used to read as a child. With a magician and giants and spells going wrong, it is packed full of imagination, joy and delight.

Ten year old Callie is struggling to settle into her new life in the mountains after living a life in London. But when a magical house crashes into her garden, Callie is pulled into an urgent mission.

Winnifred, the owner of the house, has lost her precious Wanderdust and if Callie can't help her find it, then her house is in terrible danger. But soon Callie learns that she might be the reason for the Wanderdust going missing in the first place.

This story deals with big and relatable issues, such as grief, moving house and old and new friendships. And yet Rachel Chivers Khoo wraps these themes up in a captivating and immersive story that crackles with magic. The result is a rollercoaster ride of imagination, adventure, peril and emotion. There are high stakes and urgent missions at the same time as Callie is coming to terms with her past, present and future. However, none of it felt too heavy because there's a great balance of light and dark, humour and sadness mixed with a huge dose of imagination.

There's a fabulous nod to folklore and famous stories too - giants, houses falling out of the sky, woodland and pixies all remind me of those old classics. And yet there's something incredible fresh and contemporary about the story too as well as a dynamic and exciting energy.

When Callie Brown’s Dad took a new job as a Geology Researcher in the Mourne Mountains, Northern Ireland, he moved her away from everything, and everyone, she loves. She wants to return to London, he works so much she never sees him anyway. To rub salt into her wound, she can’t even go back for her best friend’s birthday party, and they have never been apart on their birthdays before. Callie hates it here and has no interest in meeting new friends, even though Samuel Donnelly only lives next door.

The one night, a loud boom comes from outside and when Callie rushes over to look out of her window, she is shocked to see a two storey house, upside down in her back garden, then seemingly disappears leaving behind a huge crater in the ground. Callie is convinced that she must have been seeing things until a paper plane, moving of its own accord, brings a plea for help and secrecy from Winnifred Potts, the magician of the house.

Winnifred has crash landed and lost her Wanderdust, the magic that charges everything in the house and in turn, Winnifred herself as her magic is tied to her home. Without Wanderdust, the invisible-intangible-imperceptibility charm will fail leaving the house to fall victim to the other magical creatures as they grind up the house, piece by piece to steal its magic for themselves. Without the house, Winnifred herself can’t survive either. She needs Callie, with the help of Sam, to take a Catch-All-Telescopic Sky-Net to retrieve the Wanderdust for her. Imagine her dismay when she finds out that Callie and her homesickness are the reason for her crash landing in the first place.

Callie and Sam face a race against time to save the House and Winnifred. Callie comes to the realisation that it is possible to miss something that you’ve lost but also love something new. She realises that she has everyone that she misses inside her heart. Will she be able to embrace Adventure Magic in time or will she be too late to collect the Wanderdust?

Another great story for newly confident readers age 7-9 by Rachel Chivers Khoo.

This is an exciting children’s book with nice, complementary artwork which I liked. A fantasy story of magic and mayhem, of finding your feet as a child in a new place, and of discovery things about your family not spoken about because of the grief of loss. That makes it sound really sad, and it isn’t at all. It’s full fun and action. As an adult I found some of the descriptions around how the magic works here a little confused. As a child I would have just accepted it, and read on to find out what happened next, without any determent to my enjoyment. Thank you to Walker Books and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

This is a charming, magical story with a powerful message about belonging.

The main character, Callie, is relatable and her problems feel real. So, it is only when facing huge magical problems that she is able to step away from her own issues to tackle a problem on behalf of a magician.

There are lovely themes on dealing with grief and home being carried around with you - as well as an actual magical house!

The illustrations throughout the book really lift the story, as do the magical adverts and recipe at the end.

I used the author's first book in my course and my students love the book. We were luck enough to have had Rachel join us on Zoom for an author visit which was the highlight of the course.

Rachel has a unique way in blending emotional vulnerabilities with magic. It is this combination that can help children feel more open about their feelings as the whole process becomes magical.

First of all thank you so much to the publisher and also Netgalley for letting me read this book before its release date!

When I saw this book's cover and read the synopsis for the first time, I had this sense of nostalgia tugging me to read this book. Before I even opened up the first page, I already knew this book will give me that nostalgic feeling of my childhood, and it was true! I finished this in less than an hour, and my heart felt really warm after finishing it.

I loved the simple message of how people can be your home, and also that sometimes you don't have to be afraid of change. I loved Callie as a character and I loved Sam and Winnifred as well. I think the way Callie was homesick was very realistic and I just truly loved seeing her character growth through out this book. This book was wholesome, whimsical, and magical in the way that tugs my heart. I would've loved to read this book when I was younger - it felt like the kind of books I would gravitate towards, and in a sense it did remind of my other childhood series such as Rainbow Magic and The Bliss Bakery.

This book was a really good book about a girl with homesickness and my favourite bit is when Callie realises that your home is about the people and not about where you live.
I've never read any other books by this author but I would definitely recommend this book. The only thing that I didn't like is that the readers never actually get to meet Callie's best friend even though the story talked about her a lot.

Rachel Chivers Khoo writes a charming magical story. Her first book The Wishkeeper’s Apprentice was lovely and heartwarming. It was filled with magic!
In this book, The Magician Next Door, we meet Callie who has moved to Ireland from London. She is incredibly homesick and misses her best friend. One night, she hears a crashing sound and spies a house upside down in her garden. However, it quickly disappears and she is left exploring this mystery. Her neighbour Sam also comes to investigate and though her story seems unbelievable, he does believe her.
When a magical letter appears begging for help, the pair know for certain that magic is around them. They meet Winnifred Potts, a magician tethered to her house. The house sensed some powerful human emotions that caused it to crash and Callie knows her homesickness is to blame.

Can Callie and Sam save Winnifred’s house before the giants plunder it or the fairies steal trinkets? What will happen to Winnifred if the house disappears? Callie needs to overcome her homesickness and quickly!

A brilliant and heartwarming story about moving, making friends and understanding that your home is where your heart and people are!