When the Witch of the Waste comes to Sophie Hatter’s store and turns her into an old woman, Sophie’s life finally starts to get interesting. Soon Sophie is rushing into the Wizard Howl’s moving castle, making a deal with a fire demon in order to escape the spell she’s under, and at the same time discovering that someone else is burdened by a malignant spell: the Wizard Howl, himself.

Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and her family live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle’s walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has “captured the castle” –and the heart of the reader- in one of literature’s most enchanting entertainments.