Something About Backwards Day

Madam I'm Adam

Something About Yon Yonson

What song through yonder window breaks?

Something About Dwarfs with Anvils

Heavy metal.

Something About 3-D Printing

Do it yourself Bellairs.

Something About Cotton Balls

From our "not what we thought it was" file.

Something About Sonorous Busses

Hush that fuss.

Something About Ethan Allen

He's got the way to sell me chairs.

Something About Gildersleeve

A hard clue to crack.

Something About Squirrel Appreciation Day

Sciuridae Scurrying Day

Time Capsule: CompleatBellairs at 25

Bellairs fandom hit the Internet 25 years ago today when the Compleat Bellairs debuted. The site was the first major online presence to celebrate John Bellairs and Brad Strickland. For eight years this unique and artistic site reigned supreme with character biographies; book synopses detailing the good, the bad, and the ugly; quotes, reviews, inspired art, and other features for fans.

It doesn't take a tabergan to see time fly.

• More: Interview: Jonathan Abucejo (March 2001)

Something About a Purple Wooden Fish

Without purple-hued malt-worms.

Something About Dr. Nesheim

Can't you see we're searching, searching.

Happy Birthday, John Bellairs

Another Jan. 17 rolls by and we take a moment to celebrate what would have been the 83rd birthday of John Bellairs.

Something About Borkman

Someone rotten in the state Minnesota.

Something About the British Museum

Celebrating centuries of stuff

Something About Showing vs. Telling

Will he tell us what this show meant?

Something About Instant Bellairs Manga!

アートを楽しむ

Something About Making a Better Watson

Now you know such individuals exist out of stories.

Something About the Monday Club

So good to me?

Something About 'Warlock' Word Choice

What's in a word?

Something About Balloon Ascension

Up, up and away with the humanity!

Something About Final Jeopardy!

Potpourri for $200.

Something About Bobbleheads

I shake my head back and forth (just shake it)

Something About Some Sphinxes

Riddle ye this.

Something About Twelfth Night

To Sir Toby!

Something About the Colour Out of Books

Add another hue.

Something About #JohnBellairsMonth

...which should always be 31 days....

Something About Tenderfoot

The Scouts return'd again.

Something About 2021

Happy New Year!

Finding "The Two Magicians" after 50 Years

Several decades (or so) ago, in a country whose name matters and is already known, there was an author named John Bellairs, and very much the one you are thinking of. He wrote about two characters named Prospero and Roger Bacon:

Prospero lived in the South Kingdom and...stayed at home a great deal, and his trips to other places in the North and South were made on odd occasions and (sometimes) by still odder modes of travel. [...] Roger Bacon, who spent most of his time in England, was more familiar with the border country between the North and the South than Prospero was.

This story crammed with wizards was The Face in the Frost. In 1973, author Lin Carter wrote in his Imaginary Worlds: the Art of Fantasy of his three choices for the best fantasy novels to appear since The Lord of the Rings. His selections were The Last Unicorn (1968) by Peter S. Beagle, Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970) by Joy Chant, and The Face in the Frost (1969). Carter included the following passage about Bellairs following his analysis:

...in fact, [Bellairs] has produced for my yet-unpublished anthology of juvenile fantasy, entitled Magic Kingdoms, a new short-story which tells how his diabolic duo [Prospero and Roger Bacon] first became friends.