Wizard's Hall

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Wizard's Hall is a 1991 fantasy novel by Jane Yolen which is often favorably compared with the Harry Potter series.

The mother of shy Henry sends him to "Wizard's Hall" where he can train to become a wizard. At the Hall he is renamed "Thornmallow", suggesting that he is prickly on the outside yet soft inside.

He soon becomes quite conspicuous as he covers a classroom in snow, yells during an orientation speech and has other embarrassing moments.

He soon learns that he is one of 113 students who are being prepared to confront the evil wizard Nettle and his huge Beast. Thornmallow feels he may not be equal to the challenge.

Yolen has criticized the Harry Potter series. This is based on the suspicious similarities of the series with Wizard's Hall, published years before the first Harry Potter book.

“

I read the first three. The fourth one stopped me in my tracks, partially because even though the story moves along, I just don't feel like they're well written. Besides, I wrote a book called "Wizard's Hall" [in 1991, eight years before the first "Harry Potter" book]. And there's an awful lot of "Wizard's Hall" in it [the Harry Potter books]. I always tell people that if Ms. Rowling would like to cut me a very large check, I would cash it. ["Wizard's Hall"] has got a boy named Henry [who] goes to wizard school, doesn't think he has talent. He has a good friend with red hair. There's a wicked wizard who's trying to destroy the school, and the pictures on the wall move and speak and change. I have kids who write to me all the time and say, "I thought you had stolen Harry Potter, but my teacher pointed out that you published it eight years before Harry Potter."[1]

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