Magical schools in children’s books

I think magical books are an essential part of fantasy fiction aimed at children – after all, the world that children know and can best relate to is that of school, and books set in magical schools offer a perfect setting to explore some of the issues and challenges that children face in a fantastical setting.

Especially now that Harry Potter is not something we should be encouraging our children to read, we definitely need some good quality magical school fiction to feed young minds. If it features some examples of functioning parents and maybe a non-boarding school environment, even better!

Magical schools for adults: Student edition

This is the type of magical school book that I seem to struggle the most with. A lot of these will be university-based (or a magical equivalent), so the characters are adults but they’re also students.

Theoretically, I should enjoy these stories (especially since I’m a bit of a perpetual academic myself), but they always seem to be written in ways I don’t enjoy! I often find myself thinking they would work better written as a YA book… I also think they can easily fall into the chosen one who is good at everything without trying trope, which I also find annoying. A recent example of this type of book that didn’t work for me would be Arcana Academy by Elise Kova (see my review here).

That’s not to say this type of book can’t be good or that some people don’t enjoy it – that person just isn’t me. I do think there’s some good YA/Adult crossover material here for people that enjoy that sort of thing. I am still waiting to find a really good magic school for adults that doesn’t frustrate me, though.

Magical schools for adults: Teacher edition

Finally, we come to the books that follow the teachers (or professors, researchers, or even parents etc.). I haven’t seen a lot of these, but I find myself enjoying them significantly more. It could be because it feels like a fresher take on the trope, but I also enjoy the greater maturity of the characters and the creativity of the plot lines. I don’t think this is necessarily any better than any other setting for a story, but I have enjoyed what I’ve read so far.