Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Wizard Test
	Author:	Bell, Hilari
	Date Published:	2005
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	6 - 8
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Booktalk:
Dayven knew he might as well get the test over with. It was his fourteenth birthday, and it was time to take the Wizard Test to find if he had the talent. Not that he wanted it. Everyone knew that wizards weren’t to be trusted. His grandmother had been a wizard who had been killed for her actions. Dayven only wanted to be a full Guardian, just like all the other boys, but the knowledge of his grandmother haunted him so far as the rest of the youngsters were concerned. So, Dayven went to wizards’ compound and took the test. He passed of course. But, when he told the sorcerer that he didn’t want to be, the old man said that he didn’t have to be. Even though in his experience, the magic would find its way to him sooner or later. But, Dayven was determined not to become a wizard, so he left. But upon returning to his room, he found that the Landowner wanted to talk to him. It turned out that the Landowner wanted him to train as a wizard . . . only in reality to be a spy! The lord believed that the wizards might be in league with the Cenzar and might help them in an attack upon the Tharn, Dayven’s people. They wanted Dayven to discover the truth. So, Dayven returned to the wizards compound, telling them that no one wanted someone who was half wizard and that he had no choice but to become a wizard. Further, what he had been shown during the test was . . . interesting. He was to be apprenticed to Reddick, apparently a useless, drunken lout of a wizard. But Dayven began to find that things weren’t quite what they appeared. Reddick was more than Dayven thought, wizards weren’t really the cowardly and craven beasts that he had been taught, and as for the Cenzar . . . Sam Marsh May, 2005 for Fall, 2005