before the beep

Good readers of this Tumblr, I need your help.

I am trying to find a fantasy series from my youth that my memory has lost the title and author of. It was in my grade school library, so it came out no later than early 1998. There were at least four or five of them, not long.

Of course, it starred a young poor boy learning how to be a wizard. One of the books had a castle and fair where everyone turned into animals, and the head wizard appears to the boy in the flames of a fire, telling him he’s got to save everyone or else, etc.

The first one may have had him rooming with a bratty rich wizard, who at one point got pissed and got in a duel with him, wasting a bunch of energy summoning a giant dog, not just an illusion of one - and then the kid summons a fake cage to confuse the beast, and the other dismisses it, with the narrator all being smarmy about how the other boy was being cocky and wasting his energy.

If any of this sound familiar to you, I’d love to know where it came from. Thanks!