Besides, she knew her hair would not dry in time for school, and she would spend half the day with chilly ears.

However, there was no point in washing her hair if she were only going to be moved as far as Paraparaumu. Just for a moment Laura had had a dream of washing her hair and coming out from under the shower to find she was not only marvellously beautiful but also transported to Paris. Made in New Zealand, it said, Wisdom Laboratories, Paraparaumu. The Changeover First Page “1 WarningsĪlthough the label on the hair shampoo said Paris and had a picture of a beautiful girl with the Eiffel Tower behind her bare shoulder, it was forced to tell the truth in tiny print under the picture. ‘Startlingly original and refreshing – the most powerful novel this versatile and idiosyncratic author has written.’ ‘Original and unforgettable – a seamless combination of supernatural thriller and teenage love story’ Unless she and Sorensen joined together to use their supernatural powers… And there was nothing anybody could do to help him. Why hadn’t she snatched Jacko’s hand away in time? The hideous mark stamped on it meant that her little brother would sicken and die. There had been others: the day her father left home, the she met Sorensen, the boy with the strange silver eyes.īut nothing had prepared her for today’s terrible danger. Laura knew, when she looked in the mirror that morning. The Carlisles inform Laura that to defeat a powerful magician like Carmody, she’ll have to become a witch herself, undergoing a potentially dangerous transformation.“‘The hair was hers and the eyes were hers… However, for all that, the face was not her face for it knew something that she did not.’ To save her brother, Laura gets help from a handsome classmate, Sorensen Carlisle (Nicholas Galitzine), who comes from a long line of witches - including his mother Miryam ( Lucy Lawless). Then an unsettlingly friendly stranger, Carmody Braque ( Timothy Spall), casts a spell on the boy, and begins sapping his life force. The impressive young actress Erana James plays the teen, Laura Chant, a low-level psychic who spends much of her days anxiously fretting about her rambunctious younger brother Jacko, while their divorced mother ( Melanie Lynskey) works long hours at a bookstore.

It’s taken a while for Margaret Mahy’s beloved, award-winning 1984 young-adult novel “The Changeover” to make it to the big screen but the writer-director team of Miranda Harcourt and Stuart McKenzie have given the book an astute adaptation, balancing magical arcana with everyday adolescent turmoil.

The changeover by margaret mahy