书名：Charmed Life 美丽人生/魔法生活—克里斯托曼奇历代记1
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数720
作者：Diana Wynne Jones戴安娜·韦恩·琼斯
出版社名称：HarperCollins
出版时间：2009
语种：英文
ISBN：9780007255290
商品尺寸：13 x 2.1 x 19.7 cm
包装：平装
页数：288

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci《克里斯托曼奇历代记》系列是英国幻想文学大师戴安娜·韦恩·琼斯继“哈尔的移动城堡”系列外又一脍炙人口的作品。这本Charmed Life《美丽人生》正是“克里斯托曼奇历代记”的首部曲，又译作《克里斯托曼奇历代记1—魔法生活》。本书为英文版，适合9岁及以上有一定英文基础的儿童或青少年阅读。
推荐理由：
1.琼斯代表作之一，荣获卫报儿童图书奖、德国读书老鼠奖及英国卡内基儿童学奖提名；
2.故事糅合了魔法、幽默、欢乐及动人的真理，很适合孩子或青少年阅读；
3.英文原版，印刷清晰，字体较大，阅读舒适。
Winner of the Guardian Award.
Glorious new rejacket of a Diana Wynne Jones classic award-winning favourite, featuring Chrestomanci—now a book with extra bits!
Review
“... Her hallmarks include laugh-aloud humour, plenty of magic and imaginative array of alternate worlds. Yet, at the same time, a great seriousness is present in all of her novels, a sense of urgency that links Jones’s most outrageous plots to her readers’ hopes and fears...”—Publishers Weekly“Truly magical—guaranteed to leave you gasping—even hotter than Potter”—The Bookseller
“Diana Wynne Jones could teach Stephen King and JK Rowling a thing or two ... [she] has a skill for inserting just the right amount of detail in her written words, leaving you satiated but not stuffed.”—SFX

卡特崇拜姐姐格温多琳，甚至不介意生活在魔法天分颇强的姐姐的阴影之下，也不在乎被姐姐施法折腾。毕竟在父母遭遇意外过世之后，姐姐是他的亲人。所有的麻烦都从姐姐给克里斯托曼奇寄去信件开始，姐弟俩离开故乡，成为拥有强大魔法的克里斯托曼奇的被监护人。克里斯托曼奇城堡中的生活不尽如人意，烦心事一桩接一桩。然而，任何问题都比不上格温多琳忽然做出的某个惊人之举，让卡特的生活出现了翻天覆地的变化。
Everybody says that Gwendolyn Chant is a gifted witch with astonishing powers, so it suits her enormously when she is taken to live in Chrestomanci Castle. Her brother Eric (better known as Cat) is not so keen, for he has no talent for magic at all.
However, life with the great enchanter is not what either of them expects and sparks begin to fly!

戴安娜?韦恩?琼斯（1934－2011）英国幻想小说作家，写作幻想小说已有三十多个年头。凭借漫无边际的想象力，她的故事糅合了精彩的情节，热情的幽默感，和动人的真理，为各年龄层的读者所喜欢。她的作品受到国际褒奖并获得了一系列荣誉，包括两次“波士顿环球报号角书奖”以及英国幻想协会卡尔?爱德华?瓦格纳奖——以肯定她在幻想文学领域的重大影响。日本动画家宫崎骏改编了《哈尔的移动城堡》，拍摄成一部动漫电影，获得了奥斯卡奖提名。
Diana Wynne Jones has been writing outstanding fantasy novels for more than thirty years and is one of the most distinguished writers in this field. With unlimited imagination, she combines dazzling plots, an effervescent sense of humor, and emotional truths in stories that delight readers of all ages. Her books, published to international acclaim, have earned a wide array of honors, including two Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honors, the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award for having made a significant impact on fantasy, and the World Fantasy Society Lifetime Achievement Award. Acclaimed director and animator Hayao Miyazaki adapted her international bestsellerHowl’s Moving Castleinto a major motion picture, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Cat Chant admired his elder sister Gwendolen. She was a witch. He admired her and he clung to her. Great changes came about in their lives and left him no one else to cling to.
The first great change came about when their parents took them out for a day trip down the river in a paddle steamer. They set out in great style, Gwendolen and her mother in white dresses with ribbons, Cat and his father in prickly blue-serge Sunday suits. It was a hot day. The steamer was crammed with other people in holiday clothes, talking, laughing, eating whelks with thin slices of white bread and butter, while the paddle boat steam organ wheezed out popular tunes so that no one could hear themselves talk.
In fact the steamer was too crowded and too old. Something went wrong with the steering. The whole laughing, whelk-eating, Sunday-dressed crowd was swept away in the current from the dam. They hit one of the posts which were supposed to stop people being swept away, and the paddle steamer, being old, simply broke into pieces. Cat remembered the organ playing and the paddles beating the blue sky.
Clouds of steam screamed from broken pipes and drowned the screams from the crowd, as every single person aboard was swept away through the dam. It was a terrible accident. The papers called it the Saucy Nancy Disaster. The ladies in their clinging skirts were quite unable to swim. The men in tight blue serge were very little better off. But Gwendolen was a witch, so she could not drown. And Cat, who flung his arms around Gwendolen when the boat hit the post, survived too. There were very few other survivors.
The whole country was shocked by it. The paddle boat company and the town of Wolvercote between them paid for the funerals. Gwendolen and Cat were given heavy black clothes at public expense, and rode behind the procession of hearses in a carriage pulled by black horses with black plumes on their heads. The other survivors rode with them. Cat looked at them and wondered if they were witches and warlocks, but he never found out. The Mayor of Wolvercote had set up a Fund for the survivors. Money poured in from all over the country. All the other survivors took their share and went away to start new lives elsewhere. Only Cat and Gwendolen were left and, since nobody could discover any of their relations, they stayed in Wolvercote.