"We sat there spellbound as it flowed and eddied about the room, transforming all it touched." In his stories for children and young adults, Michael Bedard uses vivid, sometimes disturbing prose, as in this description of a magician's spell in A Darker Magic. Bedard's work is filled with mystery and magic as he investigates themes of freedom, self-determination, and imagination. His novels often investigate the supernatural, but they don't fit neatly into one category. They have been variously described as "realistic," "fantasy," "dark-fantasy," "mystery," "psychological thriller" and "mystical prose- poetry." Joanne Findon explains in Canadian Children's Literature that Bedard masters a number of difficult ideas in a sophisticated manner. "One of the most intriguing aspects of Bedard's work is his richly textured representation of evil," Findon says. "In fact, Bedard prefers to speak of "darkness"--a term which expands his symbolic range considerably and allows him to deploy...