On May 1, I posted a few thoughts on Margaret Mahy’s classic YA fantasy, The Changeover, on the Supernatural Underground.

You can read the post in full by clicking on: Book of Magic — The Changeover by Margaret Mahy.

As I wrote then: “First published in 1984, Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover won the Carnegie Medal (for Children’s and YA fiction) in the same year. It is now regarded as a classic of supernatural Kids/YA fantasy.” It is also currently being made into a film and Hachette have rereleased the title — huzza for re-releases! 🙂

However, since penning my Supernatural Underground thoughts I have found myself reflecting further on the story. In particular I’d like to shine the spotlight a little more closely on my observation that: “The author has focused on universal themes of family, friendship, and “the ties that bind”…”

This also ties into the title and the fact that The Changeover is—in my humble opine—a story of “layers.” On the surface it’s a tale of a girl and a magic-imbued quest to save her younger brother from an evil spirit/demon. In this sense it is part of a great  fantasy tradition, from relatively contemporary offerings such as the film Labyrinth and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, to  older stories such as Hans Christian Anderson’s The Wild Swans, itself based on the The Six Swans folktale collected by the Brothers Grimm, or Janet in the Scottish folktale of Tam Lin—although the latter is her lover, not her brother.

The Changeover is also a coming-of-age tale, perhaps not surprisingly since it is written for YA readers, and the heroine, Laura’s, path is very much a theme of the story in this respect, not least in terms of the titular “changeover.”

However, the aspect of the story that struck me most strongly is the way in which it is a story about families. The first family readers’ meet is the very functional unit of Laura, her divorced mother, Kate, and baby brother, Jacko. Shortly afterward we meet the Carlisle family of three witches: grandmother, Winter; mother, Miryam; and son/grandson, Sorenson (aka Sorry.) While not dysfunctional in itself, the Carlisle family has its pressures, which resulted in the fostering of Sorenson with a family that ended being violent.

Overlapping and interacting with the three families that are most central to the Changeover story, i.e. Kate/Laura/Jacko and Winter/Miryam/Sorenson, are Kate’s new relationship with Chris Holly and the subsequent reintroduction of Laura and Jacko’s absent father Stephen, with his new (and pregnant) wife, Julia.

So the heart of the story, from my perspective, is not the magical possession of Jacko and Laura’s quest to save him, or the coming-of-age journey and changeover required of her in order to do that. It’s really all about the  circles of family and relationship that overlap and connect and support Laura to enable  her to combat evil and seek to save Jacko.

So if you asked me what The Changeover is about, I will always answer that primarily, it’s a story about family and “the ties that bind” (nods to Bruce Springsteen. 😉 )  Of course, being a tale of layers, it’s also about other things as well, such as personal integrity and the use and abuse of power — but then, I would expect nothing less of a master storyteller such as Margaret Mahy.

Am I recommending The Changeover? Sure am!