The Changeover

The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance is a fantasy novel for young adults by the New Zealand writer Margaret Mahy, first published in 1984. It won the Carnegie Medal, the second of Mahy's two awards, and it is set in Christchurch.

Laura Chant is fourteen and lives in a new suburb of the city when her small brother Jacko begins to behave as though something else has taken hold of him. The doctors can find nothing wrong, the illness gets worse, and Laura becomes convinced that the cause is not medical.

At school there is an older boy called Sorry Carlisle, whose family has a name in the neighbourhood for strangeness, and Laura believes he has powers she does not. She goes to him for help and finds that the only available remedy requires her to become something she has spent her life trying not to be. The story is grounded in an ordinary school, family and suburb, and the supernatural grows out of the everyday life of the place. The novel is a romance as well as a story about magic, and it was later adapted for film and television.