Ordinary Magic sort of takes the Harry Potter world of Muggles, the ordinary people who make the world work, and Wizards, the special magical people who get to go to Hogwarts for special training and for their own protection, and turns it upside-down. In Abigail Hale’s world, everybody has magical abilities, well, almost everybody, It’s not usually a question of whether you’re magical or not, only how gifted you are. Abigail’s older sister Alexa is a Nine. (Tens are quite rare.) So when Abigail goes for her Judging on her thirteenth birthday, she’s hoping to test out at least a Six level. Instead, she and her loving family (two brothers, two sisters, Abigail is the youngest) receive the devastating news that Abby is an Ord, ordinary, no magical ability at all.

“There are few options available to the families of ords. It is a shame there are so few, but it’s not as if it can be changed. . . I sympathize with the frustration you must be feeling. The tragedy of realizing that one of your own is . . .” He sighed. “This must be very hard. I understand that many families experience difficulty in deciding what to do. I believe a few occasionally decide to keep their . . their. . . ”
“Children,” Mom cut in.

Abby’s family is large and loving, one of the first things I noticed that I liked about this book. Abby meets other ord children who do not have such great families, but she is lucky to have a family that believes in her, works to provide the best opportunities for her, and loves her, even though she is an Ord, non-magical, a practical pariah in normal (magic-permeated) society.

I have to say here that I am about to decide that our society is made of two kinds of people: not Ords and Magicals, but Creatives and Non-creatives. I look at books like this one and several others that I’ve read recently, and I’m amazed. How do authors think of such entertaining and ingenious plots and characters and worlds of imagination? I mean, OK, I do have a semi-original idea every once in while, but then some of those same imaginative people who have a stray idea actually carry it through to a finished project, in this case a whole book (soon to be a series). And it works, and I enjoy, and then I read another book in which a completely different person has taken a completely different idea and turned that seed into yet another real-life product. And I am again grateful to God for the gifts and ideas and talents and vision He has given each of us, especially those “creatives” who bring so much joy to me in the books they write or the other works of art they produce.

So, back to Ordinary Magic. I liked the premise; I liked the book. It might get old and repetitious as a series, but then again, maybe not. Ordinary Magic is eligible to be nominated for a Cybils Award in the category of Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Nominations are open October 1-15, 2012.