Diana Wynne Jones "is a prolific novelist of enormous range who can raise hairs on the back of the neck one minute, belly laughs the next," asserts Elaine Moss in the Times Literary Supplement. Jones not only creates mythical worlds peopled with wizards, witches, fire demons, ghosts, djinns, genies, and moving castles, but also writes about seemingly "normal" families whose lives become complicated through the introduction of a magical element, such as the strange chemical sets in The Ogre Downstairs. Norse, Celtic, and Greek mythological references abound in her writings as does her reliance on a story from The Arabian Nights as the basis for Castle in the Air. As Penelope Farmer notes in the Times Literary Supplement, "Jones has a remarkable ability to grasp the basic elements of myth or fairy tale, twist them sharply, then fit them without undue strain into patterns of her own making...