Diana Wynne Jones | Children's author, 76

Diana Wynne Jones, 76, whose critically admired stories and novels for children and teenage readers imagined fantastical worlds inhabited by wizards, witches, magicians, and ordinary boys and girls, died of cancer Saturday in Bristol, England.

Although Ms. Jones never became the household name in the United States that J.K. Rowling did with the Harry Potter franchise, her work was especially relished by connoisseurs of the young-adult fantasy and science-fiction genres.

She wrote more than 35 books, including the Chrestomanci series, which focuses on a powerful enchanter who presides over a world in which magic is, in her words, "as common as music." Another popular book, Howl's Moving Castle (1986), about a young girl transformed into an old crone by a spiteful witch, was adapted into a 2004 animated film.

Her prose was literate and sonorous, and she wrote with what sounded like an arched eyebrow - perfect for the skeptically wise young person who was her ideal reader.

"Jones' fiction is relevant, subversive, witty and highly enjoyable, while also having a distinctly dark streak and a constant awareness of how unreliable the real world can seem," the British critic Christopher Priest wrote in the Guardian of London this week.

Ms. Jones was born in London and graduated from St. Anne's College, Oxford. She married a university professor, John A. Burrow, in 1956, and began writing children's books because the ones she was reading to her own children displeased her.

Her survivors include her husband; three sons, Richard, Colin, and Michael; and five grandchildren. - N.Y. Times News Service