Ever on the quilting goes,
Spinning out the lives between,
Winding up the souls of those
Students up to one-thirteen

There's a book about a young boy whose mundane life is one day interrupted by a call to go to wizard boarding school, where he gets into youthful hijinks overshadowed by feats about a dark wizard. There's a prophecy, friends made along the way, and finally a climactic battle against the dark wizard returned. I read it when I was young, and it left a lasting impact on me.

That book is Jane Yolan's Wizard's Hall, published six years before Harry Potter, and in contrast to Harry Potter it emphasizes a particular virtue that's not often lauded in main characters. To use a term from the more famous later book, Wizard's Hall is a book that centres Hufflepuffs.

A Book Full Of Lessons

Wizard's Hall is stuffed to the gills with aphorisms. Our main character, Thornmallow, will repeat many of them to himself at the appropriate moment. Some come from teachers, some from other students, and many from Thornmallow's mother. The first chapter alone gives us "better take care than need care," "hunger is a great seasoner," and "it [...]