In the book The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull is about Johnny and one of his best friends Professor Childermass. When Professor Childermass is taken away by an un-named force, Johnny has to go and save him. Johnny takes Fergie (his best friend) and Farther Higgins along with him not even knowing what he was getting himself into. The three men follow all of the clues that the professor may have left at the place where the disappearance happened. They finally get to an island where their troubles run thick.
I liked this book because it was very suspenseful and it made you want to read on and on so that you could find out what happened next. I also liked this book because Johnny has to go through a lot and it shows how much of a friends he is to Professor Childermass.

Grownups remain out of sight for the most part in this spooky addition to the Johnny Dixon mystery series by John Bellairs. Crusty old Professor Childermass (a series regular) vanishes early on, to be replaced by crusty old Irish-American priest, Father Higgins, who brandishes a silver crucifix and rescues Johnny in the nick of some very frightening situations.

Johnny is a shy, likeable boy who tries to act brave in spite of thinking himself a coward. His lower lip quivers almost continuously as he and his friend Fergie set out to find the missing professor. (He has every reason to be nervous in a story that reminds me of "The Haunted Doll's House" by that master of horror himself: M. R. James). For reasons that remain a mystery until the last few pages, our youthful hero is plagued by a tiny human skull and an ominous jack-o-lantern after his friend, Professor Childermass disappears.

As skeletons, demons, and a haunted clock all conspire to make Johnny's life miserable, Fergie and Father Higgins pitch in to help him. The climax to "The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull" takes place on a remote rock off the coast of Maine, appropriately named 'Cemetery Island.'

The book is set in the nostalgic early 1950s (Johnny's father is a fighter pilot in Korea), but you won't have much time to feel nostalgia. You'll be too busy feeling scared. One of the reliable features of John Bellairs's adolescent fiction is that he doesn't try to make his ghosts cuddly or mawkish, like so many so-called 'teen-age horror' authors.

I'm a big fan of John Bellairs and have read about 6 of his books....The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull is by far the most thrilling. Johnny Dixon and his funny friend, Fergie find themselfs in the middle of a mystery, Just after Johnny takes a strange small skull (that he beleives to be good luck) from a miniture room that the Professor's granduncle was murdered in, they're friend, Professor Childermass has suddenly disappeared. And it's up to Johnny, Fergie, and Father Higgins to find the Professor before it's too late. I hope this review helped you and I hope you enjoy the book as I did.

The first question is of course - how does this compare with Iron John? It is not so original or deep, it is more directly helpful to men, it does at least mention women and relationships, and it shares the fault of ignoring the power problems of patriarchy and the dominance culture.

It is divided into five sections: the first is on the making of a man, the emergence from the shadow of the mother; the second is on the rites of manhood, in which he discusses initiation, the warrior, work and sex; the third is on the measure of a man, where he speaks of images and exemplars; the fourth is called a primer for now and future heroes, where he talks about quests and homecomings; and the fifth is about men and women, love, marriage and intimacy - this section also includes a long series of self-help exercises.

Sam Keen is a regular contributor to the magazine Psychology Today, has run many workshops for men and women, and has put on television series, so this is an easy-to-read book, which communicates well. It is quite freewheeling and careless at times, and there are some errors of fact in it: Unlike Iron John, it is not the product of deep study, discussion and meditation on mythic themes. It makes a distinction between prophetic feminism and ideological feminism, lauding the former and putting down the latter, which not only includes the man-haters but also the goddess-worshippers. He does at least mention patriarchy, and seems to see that it is a problem.

But when it comes to the crucial questions of how men and women are going to change society and themselves, he skates all round the question of power as if it did not exist. He does not appear to have heard of Connell, or any of the sociologists in men's studies, who make it so clear that there is a problem of unequal social power, of unequal access to resources, of unequal participation in the great power issues of our time. And so in his discussion of men and women and their relationships it is all conducted at the level of adjustment and negotiation and fair fighting as if the ground were level and the fighting could be fair. He wants women to take responsibility for their part in the problem, as if it were merely a psychological problem which could be solved at that level. For example, in an apparently fair and balanced account of feminist demands, we get this: "A feminist vision demands sexual, artistic, economic, and political equality (Military?) It further demands that men assume an equal share in the private sphere - the creation of hearth and the rearing of children." (p196)

The insertion of that one word - military - shows that he is entertaining that favourite gibe of misogynist men, that women want everything except the hard part of being a man - going to war, fighting and perhaps being killed for one's country. But the facts are, if you compare the figures, that forty times as many women die in childbirth as men die in wars. The gibe about not wanting to go to war is just that - a gibe.

So in spite of all its apparent balance and reasonableness and genuinely interesting matter about men, and despite the very nice personal touches which appear throughout the book, this one also ultimately lets us down, if we want to understand what men are and what they have to do. We still have to go to the Connells, the Segals, the Kimmels, the Brods, the Hearns, and all those less glamorous people if we want to know what is really going on and what really needs to change.

Sam Keens Fire in the Belly is a book every man and women should read. I love to read books written by people that are so wise. The contents have helped greatly to put the pieces of lifes puzzletogeather. I hope this message goes out to Sam. Thanks for a great book, I loved it. Jim Morris Trial B.C.

As a Viet Nam vet I would often wonder what invoked my responses to certain situations I would encounter as a man. After reading Keen's book I feel that I have been able to put closure to a very bad part of my life. I highly recommend ALL men read this book, as well as the women in their lives. I thank Sam for writting this book and to my Mermaid Woman, Anna Ree for telling me to read it.