Memoriam: Richard Strader

Cover Critic: The House with a Clock in its Walls (Germany, 2000)

Cover Critic is our periodic survey of readers and fans about the various artwork and illustrations of the books in the Bellairs Corpus.

Cover Critic: The House with a Clock in its Walls (Portugal, 2006)

Cover Critic is our periodic survey of readers and fans about the various artwork and illustrations of the books in the Bellairs Corpus.

Something About Lending a Hand

Why did no one ever volunteer a foot?

The House with a Clock in its Walls: 1973-2023

 
2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dial publishing John Bellairs's The House with a Clock in its Walls, the first book in the long-running Lewis Barnavelt series and the first of several young adult novels.

Something About Holyrood, Edinburgh

Crossing Britaine's Other Eye.

Something About Pages of Chemical Degradation

Heaven scent.

Something About the Color Purple

Flat Tyre.

Cover Critic: The House with a Clock in its Walls (Italy, 1988)

Cover Critic is our periodic survey of readers and fans about the various artwork and illustrations of the books in the Bellairs Corpus.

Something About the Introduction of Lewis Barnavelt

Enter the hero.

Something About Making a Better Watson

Now you know such individuals exist out of stories.

Something About the Stoddard's Lectures

Now's the time, the time is now, to travel on.

Something About Glue-laced Candy

Stuck on you.

Something About Fatty-Fatty Two-by-Four

The bully of the bulge

Something About Tying Corn Shocks

The kernel of truth at last

Something About Fourth Grade Inspirations

Tale of a fourth grade someone!

Something About Full-size Candy Bars

Give me something big to eat.

The House with a Cook in its Kitchen

Longtime readers of John Bellairs no doubt have their favorite scenes and some may even have favorite scenes that include food. How many times, for example, did Johnny scurry over to Professor Childermass's house with plans to discuss or decipher a clue only to be deterred as attention turned to cakes, candies, or tortes? What made Mrs. Zimmermann's chocolate chip cookies so popular? What makes a proper snake year sherry?

Publishers Weekly Celebrates "House"

Matia Burnett at Publishers Weekly provides some background on John Bellairs and the forthcoming movie:

Before there was “The Boy Who Lived,” there was Lewis Barnavelt, a 10-year-old orphan who brushed shoulders with wizards, witches, sorcerers, ghosts, and his share of occultists. With the film adaptation of John Bellairs’s 1973 novel, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, releasing on September 21, a new generation of readers will have the opportunity to discover Bellairs’s storytelling. The film stars Owen Vaccaro (Daddy’s Home), Jack Black (Goosebumps) and Cate Blanchett (Ocean's 8), and is directed by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever), marking the horror director’s first “family-friendly” film.

In 2011, Bradley J. Fischer and James Vanderbilt of Mythology Entertainment approached screenwriter Eric Kripke (creator of "Supernatural") for the film project. As a child of the 1980s, Kripke was very familiar with Bellairs. Kripke recently told Entertainment Weekly that “when I was 10, I fell in love with this book.” In fact, the only fan letter Kripke ever wrote as a child was to Bellairs.

Thanks, Matia!

#HousewithaclockReadalong Happening This Month

Author and blogger and Richard Denney is celebrating John Bellairs again this month.  Richard and friends are reading - what else? - The House with a Clock in its Walls to celebrate the upcoming film in just a mere 15 days.  That's around 1,296,000 ticks to go! Not that we're counting - or reusing that joke again.  Share your thoughts with Richard and friends...happy reading, all.