science

The House with a Clock in Its Walls

The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The House with a Clock in Its Walls rather than just read about it. In short: The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a 1973 juvenile mystery fiction novel written by American author John Bellairs and illustrated by Edward Gorey. It is the first of the Lewis Barnavelt novel series.

Key takeaways

The House with a Clock in Its Walls belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The House with a Clock in Its Walls to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The House with a Clock in Its Walls from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a 1973 juvenile mystery fiction novel written by American author John Bellairs and illustrated by Edward Gorey. It is the first of the Lewis Barnavelt novel series. A 2018 film adaptation was released by Universal Pictures and directed by Eli Roth.

Plot Lewis Barnavelt, recently an orphan, moves to the town of New Zebedee, Michigan, to live with his mysterious uncle Jonathan Barnavelt. Lewis' uncle turns out to be a mediocre, though well-intentioned, warlock. His next-door neighbor and good friend, Florence Zimmermann, is a far more powerful good witch. Jonathan's house was previously owned by Isaac Izard and his wife Selena, a sinister couple who became corrupted by their practice of black magic and plotted to bring about the end of the world. Before dying, Isaac constructed the eponymous clock that he hid somewhere inside the walls of the house, where it eternally ticks as it attempts to pull the world into a magical alignment, which would destroy the world. Lewis befriends a local boy named Tarby Corrigan, who is everything he isn't — popular, athletic, and thin — but the two soon begin to drift apart. Lewis tries to win Tarby back by demonstrating how to raise the dead in the local cemetery on Halloween but in doing so unwittingly releases Selena Izard from her tomb. An escalating series of encounters with the sorceress' ghost builds to a final confrontation in the basement of Jonathan's house, where Lewis must summon up his courage and prevent the couple from finishing their work and bringing about the end of the world.

Cronin House

The Cronin House in John Bellairs's hometown of Marshall, Michigan was the inspiration for his book. The house received a historical plaque in 1992. With the film adaptation debuting in 2018, Marshall's population embraced the fame with walking tours and other activities related to the book and its film.

Reception The House with a Clock in Its Walls received a New York Times outstanding book citation and a Michigan Young Readers award nomination. Anita Silvey wrote in Children's Books and Their Creators that Bellairs "established himself as one of the most compelling mystery writers for children" with The House with a Clock in Its Walls. Kirkus Reviews wrote that Gorey's drawings of the house were "creepy-cozy", and that "Bellairs doesn't bother to supply either motivation or blueprints for the [...] scheme, but if the cavalier and capricious handling of the occult by characters and author alike precludes any bone-deep shudders, the house lives up to its promise of a few gratifying Halloween shivers". The New York Times wrote: "It's the aura of this story—its blend of the everyday and the supernatural—that makes it glow among a plethora of lacklustre occult books this spring" of 1973. It continued: "What the author has done that's so special is to touch both the intellect and the feelings. He has dusted off the paraphernalia of ancient magic and made us newly aware of the difference between good and evil. His dialogue goes snap, crackle and pop. He sets chilling scenes with suspense that tightens like a screw".

Adaptations The book was used as the basis for one of the three segments in the 1979 television anthology Once Upon a Midnight Scary, hosted by Vincent Price. The book was adapted into the 2018 film of the same name.

See also Bibliography of Halloween Children's literature portal

References

External links Discussion of the book at www.bellairsia.com Once Upon a Midnight Scary at IMDb

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The House with a Clock in Its Walls

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The House with a Clock in Its Walls claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The House with a Clock in Its Walls before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The House with a Clock in Its Walls ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The House with a Clock in Its Walls

In research: The House with a Clock in Its Walls appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The House with a Clock in Its Walls in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The House with a Clock in Its Walls is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1970s horror novels, 1970s mystery novels, 1973 American novels, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The House with a Clock in Its Walls outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The House with a Clock in Its Walls in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The House with a Clock in Its Walls means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The House with a Clock in Its Walls out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The House with a Clock in Its Walls in simple terms?

Why does The House with a Clock in Its Walls matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The House with a Clock in Its Walls?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The House with a Clock in Its Walls.