Posted on by TracyC

Annie and the Old One

Annie and the Old One by Miska Miles, illustrated by Peter Parnall, 1971.

Annie is a Navajo girl who lives with her family in a traditional hogan. Her family keeps sheep, and Annie helps to tend them when she’s not at school. She also likes to listen to her grandmother’s stories.

One evening Annie’s grandmother tells the family that, by the time the new rug that Annie’s mother is weaving is finished, she will “go to Mother Earth”, meaning that the grandmother knows she is going to die. She asks each member of the family what they would like as a gift from her. When Annie looks at her grandmother’s weaving stick, her grandmother gives the weaving stick to Annie as a gift.

Annie asks her mother how her grandmother can know when she is going to die, and her mother says that many Old Ones like her grandmother can tell. Annie doesn’t want her mother to finish weaving the rug she is weaving, wanting to put off the rug being finished so her grandmother will live longer, but her mother knows that is useless, and the family needs to make rugs to sell.

To stop her mother from weaving, Annie tries to misbehave in various ways to distract her from her work. Then, she tries secretly undoing some of her mother’s weaving to delay the rug being finished.

When Annie’s grandmother realizes what she’s doing, she has a quiet talk with Annie. She explains that nobody can hold back time. The cycles of nature, life, and death must continue. Her grandmother’ talk helps Annie to understand and accept that her grandmother’s life and impending death are all part of a cycle. Rather than fight against the cycles of nature, Annie becomes part of the cycle by learning her grandmother’s craft of weaving.

The book is a Newbery Honor Book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I vaguely remember this book from when I was a kid, but I didn’t really remember the story, even when I reread it. I’m not entirely sure whether I actually did read it when I was young or if it was just a book that teachers or librarians recommended when I was young. I grew up in the Southwestern United States, not far from where the Navajo live, so it was common for us to read books of this type about Native Americans of the Southwest when I was young.

The story is a little sad, but in a gentle way. We don’t see the grandmother die, but the family, especially Annie, is starting to prepare for her loss. Annie’s grandmother also recognizes that part of her role is to help her family to understand and accept her own death. She tries to do this in a gentle but matter-of-fact way, and she gives each member of the family something from her belongings to use and to remember her by.

Part of Annie’s confusion about her grandmother’s impending death comes from the colorful way Annie’s grandmother expressed that she doesn’t expect to live much longer, saying that she will die by the time the rug is finished. The adults understand that this is a rough estimate of the amount of time the grandmother thinks she has left to live, but being a child, Annie takes it literally. She loves her grandmother and tries to keep her alive longer by delaying the completion of the rug until her grandmother helps her understand that it’s not the rug that really matters. Time will move forward, regardless, and changes will come with it. There is nothing Annie can do to change that. I liked it that, although this is hard for Annie to understand and accept, she does come to accept it.

By comparing the cycles of life and death to the cycles of nature, her grandmother helps Annie to see that what is going to happen is natural and that nature’s cycles have beauty to them. Earlier in the story, Annie’s grandmother and mother urge Annie to learn to weave and ask her if she’s ready. She wasn’t ready before, but at the end of the story, she decides that she is. Annie’s acceptance of the cycles of time and life help her to recognize her own growth and change and that she has a place in the cycle of her family as the next one to learn her family’s craft. Annie learning the craft continues the cycle of of her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother passing on her weaving stick is like passing the torch to Annie, making Annie part of her legacy and giving Annie a new role as one of the family weavers. Annie’s life will move forward through the loss of her grandmother, and she will have new roles to fill as she takes her place in the cycle of life.

Posted on by TracyC

The Talking Earth

The Talking Earth by Jean Craighead George, 1983.

Billie Wind is a Native American girl from the Seminole tribe in Florida. When the story begins, Billie has been brought before the tribe’s elders because she doesn’t believe in the tribe’s legends about talking creatures, nature spirits, and other supernatural phenomena. It was her older sister Mary who reported her to the elders, and many of the elders are also her relatives, including her uncles. At first, Billie doesn’t take it seriously. She’s always been a very practical, literal-minded girl who has questioned all of the things that her elders have told her since she was small, and she doesn’t expect their response to be very different from any of the ways they’ve responded to her youthful doubts and questions. However, this time, the elders ask her what she thinks would be an appropriate punishment for her. Billie, thinking the whole thing is ridiculous, suggests that they send her out into the Everglades alone until she finds some animals who talk to her. She expects that the elders will veto that idea because she is probably too young to go out there alone for an indeterminate period, and it’s ridiculous for anyone to expect her to find talking creatures. To her surprise, they approve of the idea and begin preparing for her journey.

Although it was her suggestion, Billie is angry because she doesn’t really want to make this trip. She asks her sister why she reported her to the elders in the first place. Mary says that, ever since she started attending the school at the Kennedy Space Center, she’s been too scientific and that, someday, she’s going to be the head of her family. When that happens, Billie will need more than science to lead a family wisely. Still, Billie is resentful.

As she sets off in her little boat, Billie reflects on what makes her different from her sister. Billie takes after her mother, who is a very practical woman (while her uncle wants to send her off on the trip with a good luck blessing, her mother provides her with food and useful tools), and her father works for the Kennedy Space Center. Both Billie and her brother chose to attend the school there, which is very modern and whose scientific principals appeal to Billie’s practical side and her desire for facts and real answers to her questions about how the world works. Billie is very concerned with the major world issues of the day, which include the possibility of nuclear war (the book was written during the Cold War) and environmentalism. These issues are far more real to her than anything in her tribe’s folk tales, and she believes in her father’s assertion that the development of space travel is important because humans may eventually need to find another planet to live on. By contrast, Mary has refused to attend the Kennedy Space Center school and is deep into the folk tales and traditions of their people. Billie looks to the future, science, technology, and the possibilities that lie out among the stars for answers, while Mary immerses herself in ancient legends and her people’s strong connection to nature and the Earth.

Alone in the Everglades, Billie listens to the calls of birds, wondering if that qualifies as “talking animals”, but she decides it doesn’t. She can make hooting noises at an owl, but it can’t speak back to her in any human language. Looking around for a place to camp, she finds a cave by noting geographical features that indicate that there is probably a cave nearby. Does that qualify as the Earth speaking to her? Then, animals around her become frightened and flee! She wishes that the animals would actually speak and tell her what frightened them, but the smell of smoke soon tells her: there’s a wildfire! Realizing that she can’t possibly paddle her boat fast enough to outrun the spreading fire, she does the best she can to wet herself down with water and take refuge in the cave.

Huddled in the cave during the terrifying fire, Billie thinks about what she knows about wildfires. She knows that occasional fires are necessary for the environment because they clear out underbrush, and that they don’t normally burn hot enough to burn the trees. She also knows that white people, who aren’t as familiar with the environment, try to clear out underbrush to fight fires, which inadvertently makes them burn hotter and makes them more dangerous. Billie also wonders whether her tribe will see the fire and try to rescue her, but they probably don’t know that she’s caught up in it because they probably think she went in a different direction.

As Billie explores the cave a little more, she finds an ancient clay bowl. At first, she thinks that means that the cave was once used as a burial place by her people, but then, she realizes that the bowl is intact. If it was meant to be placed in a burial, it would have been broken. Exploring a little further, she realizes that someone once used this place as a home, and there are other artifacts and the remains of a bed that may have belonged to a distant ancestor. She lies down to keep herself safe from breathing too much of the smoke until the fire dies down.

When it’s safe, Billie explores further, finding carved steps in the stone. She thinks about what she knows about her people’s history and her ancestors. When she goes home and tells everyone where she’s been, she plans to bring her uncle, Charlie Wind, and maybe an archaeologist to investigate this place. However, she also discovers that the ground outside the cave is still hot from the fire, too hot for her to leave. She doesn’t have much food left, and she worries that she might die in the cave before she can manage to leave. Then, she thinks about the turtle and snakes that sought refuge from the fire in the pool nearby. They could be a source of food.

Hearing a sound that makes her think that it’s a call that Charlie Wind makes, she looks around, thinking maybe he’s come to rescue her. It’s not a human, though. At first, she thinks that she sees a little person looking out of the ground, like something from one of her people’s folk tales. It turns out to be a young otter in a hole. She befriends the little otter and manages to catch some fish from the little pool that helps them to survive in the cave. The little otter shows her that the little pool is deeper than she thought, and the little otter catches another fish. It explains to Billie what happens to the fish during fires. They take refuge in underground rivers and pools. She considers whether her ancestors carved these underground rivers on purpose to bring fish to her people. Searching the cave further, she finds many more ancient artifacts from her people, including an old, forgotten medicine bundle.

The destruction of the fire makes Billie think that her father and the other scientists must be right about the Earth dying and people needing another planet to live on. Yet, she soon finds growing plants in an unexpected place. Because the trees burned, light is reaching a place where it couldn’t reach before, and new plants are growing. In some ways, nature turns out to be more resilient and adaptable than Billie expected.

When Billie finally gets the opportunity to leave the cave and go home, she realizes that her boat has burned. She salvages what she can and a few useful artifacts from the cave, and she and her otter friend set out to find another way home. Billie manages to carve a new boat for herself, witnesses the destruction of the little island with the cave that sheltered her because of white people’s development, comes to understand more about the environment and cycles of nature, and befriends an orphaned panther cub and a turtle. The longer Billie has to learn to survive by herself in the natural environment, the more she comes to appreciate her friendships with animals and to understand that she needs a connection with nature itself. She talks to them and learns to read some of the signs nature gives her. Perhaps, after a fashion, animals and the forces of nature do speak to people who are prepared to listen.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

This story is marvelous blending of coming-of-age and survival!

Some other reviewers on Goodreads took offense to the repeated criticism of white people ruining things. I didn’t feel the same way. For one thing, although the main character is a Native American girl, the author, Jean Craighead George, was a white woman. I don’t doubt that real Native Americans feel the way the main character does, but the author is still the one delivering the criticism. Jean Craighead George came from a family of naturalists, so it’s understandable that she would be critical of anybody who disregards or damages the natural environment, and she might well take issue even with the society/culture she was born into because of its treatment of nature.

That leads me to my second point, which is that the criticism delivered in the story isn’t about white people ruining everything and doing everything wrong but focuses, repeatedly, on two things that white people do that trouble the main character. First, the white people accidentally disrupt the natural environment, sometimes while trying to do things that they think will help, because they haven’t studied the environment well enough to understand the effects that their choices have. The way the character notes that clearing underbrush in an effort to stem wildfires actually makes the fires worse when they happen is an example of that. Second, white people destroy parts of the environment and what should be archaeological sites because they prioritize other things, especially development and urbanization. These things, while unpleasant, are true. The story isn’t inventing these problems, just noting them.

Billie doesn’t entirely give up her belief in science. However, through her experiences in the Everglades, she does learn to understand and appreciate the world where she lives more than she did before. Although space and the possibilities of the future are fascinating, so is the Earth, and Billie comes to realize that people need to understand and take care of the world they have rather than expecting to find another one. She doesn’t believe now that there is another planet exactly like Earth anywhere in the universe, and she realizes that, rather than searching for a new, more ideal world in space, people can find what they’re looking for by changing the way they look at the world where they live.

Throughout the story, Billie combines aspects of her people’s legends with scientific concepts that she understands, like “oxidation” and “air pressure”, and she sees how scientific disciplines, like archaeology, can help people to understand the past and how life has changed. Her new knowledge of the natural world doesn’t eliminate her understanding of science but augments it. She learns to read the body language and behavior of animals, realizing that this is a form of “talking.” By the time she encounters a Native American boy on a name quest of his own, Billie realizes that she believes in her people’s stories more than she thought she did. Explaining it to the boy, who also has a very modern view of life, helps her to clarify and share what she’s learned.

Posted on by TracyC

The Little Leftover Witch

The Little Leftover Witch by Florence Laughlin, 1960.

Young Lucinda Doon has a great time on Halloween, running around the neighborhood in her ghost costume. During the night, though, she wakes up to hear someone crying or trying not to cry. When she looks out the window, she sees a young witch. The little witch says that her broom broke, and without her broom, she won’t be able to fly. If she doesn’t get back with the other witches by sunrise, she’ll have to stay on the ground and live among normal humans for an entire year.

Lucinda feels sorry for the little witch and tries to help her. She offers the little witch her mother’s broom, but it doesn’t fly because it isn’t magic. They also try Mrs. Doon’s mops and vaccuum, but they don’t work, either. The little witch doesn’t know what to do. Lucinda offers to let the little witch sleep in her bed for the rest of the night, saying that they can talk to Lucinda’s father in the morning. The little witch insists on sleeping in the closet, though, because she likes the dark.

In the morning, the little witch tells Lucinda that her name is Felina. Lucinda introduces Felina to her parents and explains Felina’s situation. They consider whether a helicopter could help Felina, but Felina says that the only thing that can help her is a magic broom, and even then, witches can only fly on Halloween. Felina says that she’s stuck among humans for the year.

Lucinda is eager to have Felina say with them, and Mr. and Mrs. Doon discuss the situation quietly. Felina has a grouchy disposition, but the Doons can see that she’s lost and in need of help. They don’t seem to think that Felina is really a little witch, although they call her one. They say that they had better report finding Felina to the police, in case someone is looking for her. The police take pictures of Felina and take her fingerprints, and Mr. Doon, who works for the newspaper, makes sure that a report about a lost little witch appears in the newspaper. There are a lot of rumors around town that Felina could have been left behind by traveling gypsies or that her family could have been killed in an accident outside of town. However, none of the rumors come to anything, and nobody comes to claim Felina. Because no one claims her, the Doons take Felina to the court house and get a permit to keep her for a year.

The Doons insist that Felina follow their rules while she’s living in their house. They clean her up by brushing her hair and giving her a bath, although she doesn’t want one. They cannot accommodate Felina’s taste for bat wing soup, so she has to eat what they serve. They also insist that she wear pajamas at night and sleep in bed instead of the closet. When Felina acts up, Mr. and Mrs. Doon sometimes threaten to spank her, but they never do. Instead, they explain to her that, sometimes adults know what’s better for a child than the child does. There are some things that they will let her decide for herself, but when they tell her that something is an “order”, she will have to do it for her own good. Reluctantly, Felina agrees.

During her year with the Doons, Felina has many new experiences, doing things that witches never do. She has to go to school, and she learns to read. She attends a birthday party. Felina plays some mean tricks at the party because she is upset that the other children have birthdays, and she doesn’t. Lucinda’s grandfather, who has accepted Felina as another grandchild, says that problem is easy to solve because Felina can have his birthday, which happens to be October 31. Felina thanks him, the first time she’s ever thanked anybody, and she also apologizes to the birthday girl for spoiling the party, the first time that she’s ever apologized to anybody.

Felina spends Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Doons. Before Christmas, Felina gets upset because a mean boy in the neighborhood tells her that she won’t get anything for Christmas because she’s just a bad little witch and that she’ll get whips and stones instead. Since Felina is sure that she won’t get presents for Christmas anyway, she acts out more. However, Felina does get presents for Christmas, and the Doons assure her that she’s not a bad child but a “dear little witch” and that they love her.

When Felina finally takes off her witch’s hat and lets the other children use it for a making a “snow witch”, she finally loses her witchiness and seems more like a regular little human girl. She doesn’t seem to mind this, discovering that she has other interests besides being a witch and that she likes living with a family that really cares about her. When Halloween comes again and Felina has the chance to return to the other witches, she decides to stay with the family she has grown to love and that really loves her.

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a kid! It’s a good Halloween story, although much of it is set in November through New Year’s. The story speeds through much of Felina’s year with the Doons after January. Felina’s difficulties in learning to cope with family life as a little witch who has never experienced it before mostly take place over a few months, through the fall and winter.

In the end, the judge who grants the Doons the right to keep Felina permanently marvels over her transformation since he saw her the year before, thinking that it’s like magic. Felina being a witch adds a little magic to what is essentially the story of a foster child who hasn’t experienced love or a caring home before and acts out until she realizes that she is safe and loved, which is ultimately the “magic” that leads to her transformation. Felina doesn’t seem sad in the end to not return to the witches or even experiencing inner conflict in choosing between her old life and her new one. Being a witch was magical, but being among people has given her many new experiences, especially the experience of love and caring, which she never seemed to have among the witches. Nobody among the witches seemed to worry about whether or not she was healthy, celebrated her birthday as a special day, cared about her feelings, or encouraged her to consider the feelings of others.

Because, in the context of the story, Felina does turn out to be an actual young witch with real magic rather than merely a lost little girl pretending to be a witch, I remember being a little sad that she essentially gives up her magic and her original witchy personality when she becomes an ordinary little girl. She barely seems to remember that she ever was a witch. In the end, she even gives up her name to name herself after the members of the Doon family at her formal adoption, taking the name Mary Lucinda George. I thought that was a bit much. It made me feel almost like the Doons completely took over her personality in the end and that she became a little too much like another Lucinda rather than a more human version of herself. I would rather have seen her remain Felina but to keep the part about discovering that she has greater interests in life beyond being a witch and that her accomplishments as a human girl have a kind of magic to them.

Still, it is a nice story for Halloween about the magic of family love, and it does carry a sense of nostalgia. It isn’t a very long book or a difficult read, and it’s a charming story that’s great for any time.

Posted on by TracyC

The Trouble with Miss Switch

The Trouble with Miss Switch by Barbara Brooks Wallace, 1971.

Rupert is a budding young scientist, just entering the fifth grade, and his new teacher is an unusual woman called Miss Switch. A lot of teachers say they’ve got eyes in the back of their head, but it seems like Miss Switch really does. Right from the first, she seems to know what kids in class are doing when she’s definitely not looking. She even seems able to read minds at times, and when kids act up in class strange things happen. A spit ball thrown by a student ends up coming back and hitting him, and a class bully seems to get stuck while getting a drink from the drinking fountain.

In spite of the strange things that happen around Miss Switch, the kids in class like her, though. She makes their lessons interesting, and their grades improve. She’s also much more fair than most of their other teachers. Other teachers play favorites in class, having “teacher’s pets” or treating the girls much better than the boys, but Miss Switch treats everyone the same. That means, when she’s in a bad mood, everyone suffers, but when she’s happy, everyone benefits. The students appreciate the equality, but Rupert can’t help but wonder how Miss Switch is able to do some of the odd things she does.

Rupert tries to put his scientist’s mind to the question to figure out what’s going on with Miss Switch, and he comes to a startling conclusion: Miss Switch is a witch! Before telling anybody what he suspects, he decides that he has to satisfy himself that this is the case and then discuss it with Miss Switch herself. That would only be fair, and since Miss Switch has been fair with her students, Rupert thinks he should be fair with her. He does some research at the library about witches and plans a midnight excursion to the school to have a look around his classroom for clues. However, when Rupert sneaks into the classroom at night, he is started to find Miss Switch waiting for him.

Miss Switch isn’t angry that Rupert is in the classroom at night. In fact, she was hoping that he would do just that because she needs to talk to him. Miss Switch admits that she is a real witch, but she also tells Rupert that she’s in trouble. The whole world has become more modern, and computer-oriented, and the witches are no exception. They’ve recently started using a special computer to evaluate their performance as witches, and the trouble is that the computer gave Miss Switch a bad grade. It says that she isn’t “original” enough with her magic. The computer assigned her to teach Rupert’s class at school while she’s coming up with ways to make her magic more “original”, but if she can’t find a way to do it, she’ll have to spend the next 150 years sweeping the witches’ mountain with her broom. Miss Switch knows that Rupert has a creative and scientific mind, and she’s hoping that he can help her come up with some ideas.

Rupert’s first idea is for Miss Switch to improve the school’s next football game. The school’s team always loses to their rivals, and the school band is terrible. If Miss Switch can improve the band and make the team win for a change, that would be original. Unfortunately, Miss Switch’s attempt is only half successful. She definitely improves the band, but because she enchanted the number of the school’s quarterback instead of the quarterback himself, the other team also benefits because they have another player with the same number. Miss Switch gets a good rating but an F for successful completion. (Personally, I didn’t think that was fair because she was half successful. I think that should actually give her a C average.)

Meanwhile, Amelia, an old friend and fellow classmate of Rupert, has also figured out that Miss Switch is a witch and confronts Rupert about what he knows. Rupert brings Amelia along to his next meeting with Miss Switch, and she asks them for another idea for original magic. While they’re thinking it over, Rupert suddenly realizes that Miss Switch has already been using her magic in successful and original ways in her role as their teacher. To prove it to the other witches and their computer, Rupert persuades Miss Switch to take him and Amelia to the witches’ mountain on Halloween so he can make his case to the computer itself.

This is the first book in a series about Miss Switch, and it’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There’s also a cartoon movie based on the book that you can see sometimes on YouTube.

My Reaction

I remember both the book and the cartoon movie from when I was a kid! The copy of the book that I have uses a picture from the cartoon on the cover. The cartoon movie is a shorter version of the book, and there were parts of that I remembered better than the book.

I completely forgot the part in the book about Rupert doing experiments on his pets, overfeeding one and underfeeding the other. That sounds cruel, and I’m surprised that his parents knowingly allowed him to do that. Fortunately, when Miss Switch’s magic causes his pets to talk, they tell him how they really feel about his experiments and that he’ll probably kill them if he continues. When Rupert realizes that he’s harming them, he listens to them and stops the experiments.

One of the parts of the book that I remembered the best was the punch cards that they use for the computer. Most kids in the 21st century probably aren’t familiar with punch cards. They were still around when I was a young child in the 1980s, but they were on the way out. My father was a computer programmer, and he told us that punch cards were what he used when he first learned programming. When I was in first grade, we also used some as bookmarks and reading guides (holding them horizontally across the page, just under the line we were currently reading). I have no idea what the punch cards we used as reading guides were originally for. They were just left over from some old project. Even though I never actually used punch cards for their original purpose, I’m still a little nostalgic about them just because they were around when I was young.

I like the part at the end about how Rupert manages to convince both the computer and the other witches of Miss Switch’s original use of magic by simply describing what Miss Switch has done with her magic at school. The idea of a supernatural or magical teacher who uses their abilities to keep order in the class and/or make learning more fun is a great topic for a children’s book, and it’s also explored in other children’s books, such as Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots. Kids like stories that combine familiar, ordinary school life with something fantastic.

However, there are parts that I think adults can also appreciate, both because of the nostalgic pieces of the story (like the computer punch cards) and because the computer that the witches use to evaluate their performance seems like the type of performance evaluation that adults encounter in their own jobs. Like some forms of work performance evaluation that are initially touted as “innovative”, this one also proves faulty and unpopular, even among the witches who have been receiving passing grades up to this point. When Rupert accidentally gives the computer a nervous breakdown, many of the witches are actually relieved to be done with it!

Posted on by TracyC

Little Witch

Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett, 1953.

Little Minx isn’t happy living with her mother, the witch Madam Snickasnee. Minx hates it that Madam Snickasnee enchants the human children of the town, turning them into flowers. She’s lonely and has no one to play with, and everyone around is afraid her because of Madam Snickasnee. Madam Snickasnee is also critical of her, telling her that she had better improve or she’ll never make a good witch because she would rather sleep at night than ride around on a broom or brew evil potions.

Whenever Madam Snickasnee leaves her home alone, Minx has a secret experiment. More than anything, she wants to see a fairy, so she keeps brewing potions to try to summon one. Unfortunately, it never seems to work. Whenever she tries, instead of a fairy, she gets balloons, toads, or a different type of mythological creature, like a centaur. Minx also has another secret. Whenever she looks in a mirror, she sees the image of a beautiful lady, even when no one else is in the room with her. Minx has no idea who the lady is, and the lady only seems to appear in the mirror.

One day, when Madam Snickasnee punishes Minx for not brewing the black spell brew that turns children into flowers by refusing to feed her, Minx decides to take her life into her own hands and do something that Madam Snickasnee has refused to allow her to do: go to school. At first, when Minx reaches the school, she hesitates to go inside, but she hears a little voice telling her to go anyway. A kind janitor takes her to the principal’s office, and Minx tells him that she wants to enroll. When the principal finds out that she’s the witch’s daughter, he is both frightened of her and indignant that she has never been to school before when she is nine years old. Again, Minx hears the little voice telling her not be intimidated. Minx explains that her mother has never allowed her to go before, but now, she’s insisting that she wants to go to school, and it’s her right to go. Because the principal can’t argue with that and because Minx doesn’t know how to read, he sends her to the first grade with much younger children. Everyone at school is a little afraid of Minx, and Minx gets upset, but she meets a kind girl named Frances who shares some cookies with her.

Frances becomes Minx’s first friend, and she invites Minx to her house after school to meet her great-grandmother and her siblings. Frances and her siblings are orphans, and they’re being raised by their kind great-grandmother. Her great-grandmother feeds Minx, and Frances’s siblings find Minx fascinating. When Minx tells them about her experiments to summon a fairy, they want to see her do the next one. Minx sneaks them into the house when the witch is out. They try to summon a fairy, but this time, they get a nixie. They’re thrilled to see a nixie, but Minx still wants to see a fairy. The nixie is about to offer advice for summoning a fairy, but then, the spell ends, and she fades away.

Minx continues to sneak away to school when the witch goes to sleep in the day, but she is approached by a strange man called Mr. Beanpot. Mr. Beanpot is a detective who is investigating the missing children in the town. He strongly suspects that Madam Snickasnee is responsible for the disappearances, and he says that, if she has taken the children, he’s going to send her to jail. Minx is seriously worried because she knows that Madam Snickasnee is guilty, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

Minx gets a chance to fix things when her next summoning effort brings the famous Pied Piper. Since he knows how to use his own magic on children, Minx asks him if he can break the witch’s spell on the children she has turned into flowers. He does, and Minx lets the children return to their families. Minx hopes that, by letting the children go, the detective will stop his inquiries, but she’s wrong. Mr. Beanpot is still suspicious of the witch. Although the missing children have returned and don’t remember being flowers, those children know that they came from the witch’s house.

Minx worries about what the witch will say when she notices that the flowers are missing, and she worries that Mr. Beanpot will arrest her for being involved in the children’s disappearance. Minx doesn’t know how to handle the situation, so she decides to ask Frances’s great-grandmother about it. Frances’s great-grandmother doesn’t think that Minx will be arrested because she’s just a child. However, when the head of the PTA, Mrs. Sputter, decides to visit the witch to insist that, like all the other mothers of students, she join the PTA, Minx’s secret trips to school are exposed, and the witch turns her into another plant! When Madam Snickasnee confronts Minx about the missing flowers, Minx tells her that she’s hidden them because the detective, Mr. Beanpot, has been snooping around. With Madam Snickasnee suspicious about what Minx has done with the flowers, yet another mysterious disappearance for Mr. Beanpot to investigate, and Madam Snickasnee plotting what she’s going to do about Mr. Beanpot, Minx doesn’t know what to do! The only person she has to talk to is the mysterious, beautiful lady in the mirror, and although Minx doesn’t know it, she’s the one who has the answers to her problems.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

Part of the twist to this story is that the little witch herself turns out to be the child of a fairy. She was kidnapped by Madam Snickasnee as a baby. When I was a kid, I read a different book with a little witch who turned out to be a fairy called Weeny Witch (that book is very difficult to find these days), but this book is older, and there’s much more to the plot. There are also other books about little witches who go to school, but this book adds in the police and a detective who are very interested in what’s been happening to the local children.

It’s bad enough when the kids disappear, but even turning them back into children and sending them home doesn’t solve the problem. Minx hoped if the children returned home, the police might forget about her and Madam Snickasnee, but that’s not the case. The detective still wants to know where those kids have been and why they can’t remember where they’ve been or what happened when they return home, and the disappearance of the PTA lady is also something that needs investigation. That’s pretty realistic for a fantasy story where people just seem to accept the idea of witches.

I also enjoyed the appearance of different fantasy characters during Minx’s experiments to summon a fairy. Creatures like nixies are less common creatures of children’s fantasy literature, and I appreciated the author adding them to the story instead of just sticking to the most common creatures.

One thing that did bother me about the story is that this is one of those stories that makes it a point that the good characters are fair-haired and have blue blue eyes, in contrast to the Madam Snickasnee, who is dark. I never liked that when I was a kid because I have dark hair and dark eyes, but it’s a particularly common feature of stories from the 1950s. There’s a long history of blondes being idealized. Fairy tales and traditional children’s stories often featured “golden-haired” princesses and heroines (see Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (shown in illustrations, although the real-life Alice was a brunette) and The Princess and the Goblin) in contrast to dark villains as a kind of shorthand way to use their appearance to contrast between good and evil as part of the “beauty equals goodness” trope. The trope was often found in children’s literature of the 1950s as both a callback to these traditional fairy tales and nostalgic stories and a return to “normalcy” after the chaos of WWII and changing social conditions during the Civil Rights Movement. I find it stereotypical, annoying, and eye-rolling, though. If I had to pick the color of the fairy’s hair in the story, I think I’d give it a real fantasy color, like pink, blue, or lavender.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Witch Family

The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes, 1960.

Amy and Clarissa are best friends. They’re about 7 years old and live in Washington, DC. They like to draw pictures and play games of imagination, and one day, they banish Old Witch, who is the head of all the witches, to a house on a glass hill by drawing a picture of the Witch House on the glass hill. They banish her to the hill for her meanness and for eating rabbits (her favorite food), but they relent a little when they consider that Halloween won’t be the same without a scary old witch. Amy writes a letter to Old Witch to tell her that, if she can learn to be good, she can leave the glass hill on Halloween. As soon as Amy is done writing the letter, a bird snatches it up and flies away with it, to the amazement of the girls. Amy is sure that this must mean that the letter will really be delivered to the Old Witch.

Old Witch doesn’t like living on the glass hill because it’s too bare and shiny, and she doesn’t want to learn to be good. She’s also lonely because she only has Tom, her cat, for company. Then, she gets another letter from Amy, saying that she will have company if she casts a spell. When the Old Witch casts the spell, she is joined in the Witch House by a Little Witch girl named Hannah and her cat, Little Tom.

Hannah likes the Witch House on the glass hill because she thinks it’s pretty and has an amazing view. Old Witch uses her match to summon a new bed and a rocking chair for Hannah. She also summons a brush and comb for her, which is a violation of witch rules because witches usually leave their hats on all the time and never brush their hair. Still, Old Witch is fascinated by Hannah’s lovely hair and can’t resist combing and brushing it. However, Hannah doesn’t like having her hair combed, and Malachi, bumble bee, stings the Old Witch to make her stop. Malachi had joined the Old Witch at the house secretly and has become a magical bee, spelling things out when he wants to communicate, like a spelling bee. He is Amy’s representative and warns Old Witch whenever she does something that she shouldn’t do.

The Little Witch Girl shows Old Witch the spells she’s been learning in Witch School, and the two of them have races around the glass hill on their broomsticks. Old Witch sometimes scares Little Witch with her cackles and wild witch dances. Little Witch is a sweet little witch, and she tells Old Witch that she doesn’t want to be scared. Old Witch has to learn to control her behavior so she won’t scare the Little Witch.

Little Witch has to go to Witch School, and the other young witches are jealous of her because she does so well at school and lives with the head of the witches. They try to tease and bully her, but Malachi stings them whenever they try to do something mean. Eventually, the other young witches give up their mean tricks and start admiring Hannah for her witch skills.

Amy decides that the Little Witch Girl has birthdays but never ages beyond 6 years old, just like how her doll never ages, and she draws a picture of Hannah’s witchy birthday party. All of the other young witches from her witch school attends. However, the Old Witch refuses to grant her wish for Amy and Clarissa to join the party because she’s still angry about being banished. Because it’s Hannah’s birthday, any spell she casts will work for her, so she summons Amy and Clarissa herself. Amy and Clarissa keep focusing on their drawings, and Amy cautions Clarissa not to say anything because they’re in a haunted witch house.

Fortunately, Amy declares that Old Witch can’t see them because they’re invisible to her, although everyone else can see them. After that, Amy and Clarissa can ride around on Little Witch’s mechanical toy broomsticks and play with the other little witches. Eventually, the Old Witch casts a spell that reveals the girls, but she is forced to allow them to stay at the party. The Old Witch insists that she’s been good during the whole time of her banishment, but the little witches urge her to do a suitably wicked spell for their entertainment. Old Witch would, but when she tries, Malachi stings them all.

Because the Little Witch Girl needs a playmate, the girls create a lagoon with a waterfall inside the glass hill, where Little Witch Girl finds a mermaid with a baby sister to play with. Little Witch Girl wishes for a baby sister for herself. At first, Old Witch is reluctant to give her one, but finally, she casts a spell to summon a little baby witch carried by a tiny broomstick with a little black kitten. The Old Witch is surprised at how adorable the baby witch is, and caring for the baby occupies much of her time.

Even so, Old Witch is still tempted to commit acts of wickedness, particularly with finding cute rabbits to eat. When Old Witch spots some of them painting some eggs for Easter, she begins plotting to get them and their eggs to eat! Fortunately, the rabbits use painted rocks and toy rabbits to trick her. The Old Witch blames Malachi for her schemes being foiled and all of the times he’s stung her to stop her from being bad, so she challenges him to a spelling bee. Of course, Malachi is the winner because he’s literally a Spelling Bee.

When Halloween finally arrives, Old Witch is allowed out to fly with the other witches and make some scary mischief! She leaves Little Witch at home to watch the baby, but Little Witch is sad at the idea of missing Halloween, so she persuades her mermaid friend to babysit the baby while she slips out and enjoys some Halloween adventures of her own. Little Witch encounters Amy, who is also dressed in a witch costume for trick-or-treating, and the two of them switch places so Amy can have a ride on Little Witch’s broom. However, the broom takes Amy to the house on the glass hill, and she can’t get home by herself. She needs some help from Malachi.

Amy’s time alone in the witch house on the glass hill also get her thinking about how bleak the place really is. She decides that it is too harsh as a place for the Little Witch and even too harsh for the Old Witch, whose behavior has greatly improved. Relenting a little on Old Witch’s banishment, Amy gets Clarissa to help her improve conditions for the witch house and the hill through their stories and drawings.

My Reaction

This book is a story about the imaginations of two little girls and a story they create which seems to have a life of its own. The girls create the idea of the wicked Old Witch, and finding her frightening, banish her to a house that they imagine on a glass hill. All through the book, the girls add two aspects and characters to their story, drawing pictures together of the things they imagine.

There are times when the girls interact with characters in the story or send them messages. There are times when readers might question where imagination has crossed over into reality or if the girls have managed to make the witch and her family real through the power of imagination. However, it all seems to be part of their imaginary game. The story even admits this. The Old Witch sometimes tries to be sneaky and commit acts of “wickedness”, but she can’t fool the girls because Amy in particular is controlling everything that happens as she makes up pieces of the story. There are times when she wants to punish the bad Old Witch, but in the end, the witch family ends up living quite happily, and the Old Witch gets some freedom on Halloween.

Because the witches in the story are the products of the girls’ imaginations, they talk the way that Amy and Clarissa do, mispronouncing difficult words, like “banishment.” They say that Amy and Clarissa are Old Witch’s “banquishers” and that they “banquished” her because that’s how Amy says it. They also use other words that the Amy made up, like “grantify” as in “grantify a wish” instead of “grant a wish” and “haunched” instead of “haunted.”

Posted on by TracyC

The Worst Witch Strikes Again

The Worst Witch Strikes Again by Jill Murphy, 1980.

It’s a new term at Miss Cackle’s Academy, and Mildred Hubble is back! In spite of the headmistress’s gratitude toward her for saving the school the previous semester, it isn’t long before Mildred finds herself in hot water again. She still manages to get her lessons wrong, and admittedly, sometimes goofs around or does naughty things out of boredom.

In an effort to teach Mildred some responsibility, Miss Cackle makes Mildred responsible for the new girl at school, Enid Nightshade. Mildred is supposed to show Enid around and make sure that she knows what she’s doing. Miss Hardbroom, the potions teacher, is dubious about this because it often seems like Mildred herself doesn’t know what she’s doing. Although Miss Cackle is hopeful that this new responsibility will give Mildred the incentive she needs to improve, so she can set a good example for Enid. However, what no one seems to consider is whether Enid is going to be a good influence on Mildred.

During their chanting lesson, Enid sings funny on purpose, and it makes Mildred laugh, getting her into trouble again. Enid also keeps a pet monkey in her room, even though only cats are allowed at the school, and Mildred accidentally lets it loose! After the monkey causes chaos in the school, it is revealed that the monkey is actually Enid’s cat. Enid changed it into a monkey for fun, but Mildred is blamed for doing it. Mildred can’t bring herself to tattle on Enid. Worse still, Mildred’s best friend, Maud, takes offense to Mildred spending so much time with Enid instead of her. Mildred can’t help it because she knows that Miss Cackle is expecting her to help Enid, but Enid keeps getting her into trouble, and Maud starts hanging out with the insufferable Ethel instead.

Enid continually gets Mildred in trouble, putting her in danger of getting expelled, while nobody seems to suspect Enid. Yet, Mildred has trouble getting angry with Enid because she doesn’t seem to mean the trouble she causes. At least, she doesn’t seem to mean for Mildred to take the blame, although she doesn’t step up to take responsibility and clear Mildred’s name, either. It seems like, rather than setting a good example for Enid, Mildred’s lessons in responsibility will be learning how to stand up to Enid and her escapades!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

The idea of a teacher helping a student to learn responsibility by making that student responsible for a younger student is a classic boarding school story trope, dating back to Tom Brown’s School Days. However, this story humorously inverts the concept because Enid is a mischievous girl who ends up getting Mildred into more trouble than Mildred ordinarily gets into by herself! I was a bit annoyed at Enid because of how she causes trouble for Mildred and doesn’t take responsibility for it at first. The story makes it clear, though, that Enid doesn’t realized just how much trouble she’s causing for Mildred at first. When Enid realizes that Mildred is in serious trouble with the headmistress, she’s prepared to take responsibility.

It takes a nasty trick played by Ethel to really bring Mildred, Enid, and Maud together. Mildred and Enid pull off a wild stunt to get out of Ethel’s trick, and Maud stands up for Mildred and Enid, helping them to pass off the escapade as an ambitious tribute to the school. Fortunately, it’s enough to smooth things over with both the headmistress and the strict potions teacher!

From this point on in the series, Mildred, Maud, and Enid are all friends with each other.

Posted on by TracyC

The Worst Witch

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy, 1974.

Mildred Hubble is a girl at Miss Cackle’s Academy for young witches, but she can’t seem to do anything right! It’s only about halfway through her first term, and it seems like she’s always getting confused and making the wrong potion in her potions class. Then, when she gets into a fight with a snobby girl named Ethel, she accidentally turns Ethel into a pig instead of a frog. When the girls at school receive their black cats, they run out of black ones, so Mildred gets a tabby cat, who seems to have even more trouble learning to ride on broom than Mildred did, and that’s saying a lot! Miss Cackle, the headmistress, is kind and tries to be understanding with clumsy Mildred, but Miss Hardbroom, the potions teacher, seems to think she’s a lost cause.

On Halloween, Mildred’s class at school is selected to make a special display. Miss Hardbroom decides that they will do a broom formation. Mildred is nervous about how she will do on her broom, and the mean Ethel sees an opportunity to get revenge on her for the pig incident. Because Mildred accidentally damaged her own broom, Miss Hardbroom orders Ethel to lend Mildred her spare broom for Halloween. Ethel puts a spell on the broom that causes it to act up in the middle of the formation, ruining the whole thing.

Everyone is mad at Mildred, thinking the incident was just more of her clumsiness and inattention. She knows that she will be called to a conference with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom the next day. Unable to face them, Mildred decides to run away. However, outside the castle, she comes across a group of strange witches, talking about an evil plot to take over the school. Mildred is the only one who knows that the school is danger. Can the worst witch at the school manage to save it?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). This is the first book in a series. There was also a movie from 1986 (also on Internet Archive) and a tv show based on the series. (You can sometimes find the movie or some of the tv episodes on YouTube.)

The 1986 movie is fun and and contains a very trippy scene where Tim Curry, as a wizard, sings a song about Halloween. In the movie, Mildred is played by Fairuza Balk, who later played in the more serious witch movie The Craft in 1996.

My Reaction

When I was in high school, and the Harry Potter books were popular, a friend of mine pointed out that The Worst Witch was basically Harry Potter before Harry Potter existed. It’s true, too. I wouldn’t say that Harry Potter is a rip-off of The Worst Witch because there are many differences between the two series. Harry Potter has much more serious themes about death, prejudice, and oppression that you won’t see in The Worst Witch. The Worst Witch is definitely much lighter in tone. However, it is fun to notice some of the parallels. Both series are about a kid attending a magical school, and there’s a nasty potions teacher, a more privileged student who’s a snob and bully, and a villain who plots to take over the school. (Could the fact that the nasty teacher is always the one teaching the potions class possibly be an indication that many of us still carry traumatic memories from our chemistry teachers?)

I enjoyed The Worst Witch, although the stakes are much less serious than in Harry Potter. It’s a good series for younger children, combining boarding school style antics with magic and villains that aren’t overly scary but still threatening enough for Mildred to be a hero in defeating them. Mildred is a lovable misfit who constantly messes up (sometimes through her own fault and sometimes through someone else’s) but who always manages to come out on top!

Posted on by TracyC

No Such Thing as a Witch

No Such Thing as a Witch by Ruth Chew, 1971, 2013.

A new neighbor moves into one of the apartments in the brownstone next door, and the first sign that Nora and her brother Tad notice that this new neighbor isn’t a normal person is when they spot a squirrel who appears to be reading a tiny newspaper. The “newspaper” turns out to be one of the neighbor’s business cards. Maggie Brown has a business taking care of people’s cats and other animals. She seems to have a strange ability to communicate with animals and get them to do what she wants.

Nora begins to suspect that Maggie Brown might be a witch when she seems to communicate easily with their dog and when her brother starts getting along with Maggie’s cat, Henry, when he normally doesn’t like cats. The secret turns out to be Maggie’s fudge, which she says she makes from an old family recipe. A person who eats one piece loves animals, even if they didn’t before. Two pieces allow a person to talk to animals and understand what they say.

Tad has little restraint when it comes to the fudge, and when he eats too much, the kids understand just how powerful the fudge really is. Eating three pieces makes a person act like an animal, and four pieces will turn the person into whatever animal they were thinking of at the time. Tad accidentally turns himself into a cat, and Nora has to help cover for him until he turns back into himself. The effects of the fudge are always temporary, no matter how many pieces a person eats, so Tad doesn’t suffer any ill effects.

The children are intrigued by Maggie Brown and become friends with her, although Nora is unsure at first how much they can trust her. She is sure that magical Maggie must be a witch,her fudge can cause problems when their animal escapades go too far, and she doubts whether Maggie is even taking care of her animals when she finds that Maggie has been plucking out a bird’s feathers. She changes her mind after a trip to the zoo, where Nora learns that the bird has a problem with its feathers and Maggie has only been plucking out the bad ones to allow new ones to grow.

However, other people have problems with Maggie. A local shopkeeper resents Maggie after she confronts him about a cat he tried to abandon, and her landlady, who is not an animal lover, becomes concerned about the animals she’s been keeping in her apartment. When the landlady decides to call the health department and get someone to inspect Maggie’s apartment for health violations, Nora and Tad decide to see if they can turn her into an animal lover with the help of Maggie’s fudge.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

It’s a fun story about a magical neighbor and her magical fudge, which allows people to talk to animals or even turn into animals, if they eat enough. The two kids in the story enjoy having a little magic enter their lives in their otherwise ordinary neighborhood. Maggie never actually admits to being a witch, but she comes to realize that the kids understand that her fudge is magical, and she trusts them with the secret. The adults in the story never figure it out, even though some of them also eat the fudge.

Although the effects of the fudge are temporary, they do help change people’s attitudes about animals even beyond when the effects wear off. Tad continues liking Henry the cat after he gets used to him, and Nora develops better feelings for Maggie’s pet lizard once she gets to know him. The fudge allows them to get to know the animals better, look at them in a different light, and generally give them a chance. The kids hope that, once the landlady has had some samples of Maggie’s fudge, she will also develop better feelings for animals over the long term.

One other thing I wanted to mention is that, while the kids refer to Maggie casually, their mother is always trying to correct them, insisting that they call her Mrs. Brown instead, because she’s an adult. It’s traditional for children to address adults in a formal way as a sign of respect, although people in general have become much more relaxed about that. When I was a kid in the 1980s and early 1990s, I was always taught to refer to adults formally, by last name, although when I was in college in the early 2000s, that habit weakened. I had professors who preferred to be called by their first names, in spite of their academic credentials, and friends’ parents starting wanting to be called by their first names. People in Arizona are largely informal anyway, and many people even have business acquaintances call them by their first names. As a now middle-aged adult in the 21st century, I also prefer people to call me by my first name, partly because I feel more relaxed with the informality, partly because it’s what I’ve been called for most of my life, and also because my last name is a little long and some people find it difficult. I don’t care if kids even call me by my first name because that’s just who I am, and I think they probably have an easier time if they just think of me by first name.

Posted on by TracyC

What the Witch Left

What the Witch Left by Ruth Chew, 1973, 2013.

Katy and her friend Louise are bored one day at Katy’s house. They start snooping around a drawer that contains things that Katy’s Aunt Martha left behind after her last visit, even though Katy’s mother told her not to mess with them. At first, they seem pretty ordinary. There’s a pair of boots, a bathrobe with a pretty design, a pair of flesh-colored gloves, and a mirror. Katy tries on the pair of gloves, but to her surprise, they fit so well that they can’t be seen or felt once they’re on her hands. Then, Katy’s piano teacher shows up to give Katy a lesson, and Katy starts the lesson without taking the gloves off. To everyone’s surprise, Katy plays unusually while she’s wearing the gloves. Everyone else just assumes that Katy has been practicing more or trying harder than she usually does, but Katy wonders if the gloves have something to do with it.

She becomes more sure that the gloves are magic when she discovers that she can do other things unusually well while wearing them. She was never very good at sewing before, but while wearing the gloves, she mends a tear in her dress so well that it’s difficult for anyone to see that it was ever torn. Katy tells Louise that she thinks the gloves are magic and offers to let her try them, too. Louise points out that she’s left-handed while Katy is right-handed, so they can each wear one of the gloves on their dominant hands to test their magic. Like Katy, Louise finds that she can do things unusually well while wearing one of the gloves. She likes to draw chalk pictures on the sidewalk, and while wearing one of the gloves, she makes a drawing so realistic that total strangers stop and tell her how amazing it is. When the girls get to school, they both easily pass their spell test with perfect scores, and they have no trouble writing an essay in class, even though they don’t really understand or remember everything they wrote when they’re done.

It seems like Katy is right that the gloves are magic, but they soon realize that there are drawbacks to relying on magic to do all of their work for them. It turns out that the girls not only wrote the essay too easily but, because they were sharing the pair of gloves, they wrote identical essays. Their teacher accuses one of them from cheating in class and moves Katy to a different seat. Since Katy had more trouble pronouncing the words in the essay that she didn’t really write herself, the teacher also decides that she was the one who copied and assigns her an extra punishment. However, Katy admits to Louise that she’s not really angry about being punished because, although she didn’t cheat in the manner the teacher thought she did, wearing the gloves and making them do her work for her was still a kind of cheating. The girls decide not to wear them to class anymore, although they do wear them while working on their costumes for the school’s Thanksgiving play because they need help with sewing.

Before the play, Louise’s mother tells her that she took the wrong blanket for her Indian (Native American) costume and tries to give her another one to use that doesn’t look as good. Louise is upset because she had gotten her costume looking so good, and she doesn’t want the old army blanket her mother gave her. Katy offers to let Louise use Aunt Martha’s colorful bathrobe for her costume instead, but unbeknownst to the girls, the bathrobe is also magical. They realize it for the first time when Louise walks out on stage during the Thanksgiving play and is completely invisible except for her head, the only part of her not covered by the bathrobe. Some people panic when they see Louise as just a floating head, while others assume that it’s a magic trick to spice up the play. Katy and Louise let everyone think it was just a magic trick and are mysterious about how they accomplished it, but this incident makes them realize that everything Aunt Martha left behind is probably magical in some way.

Louise asks Katy more about her Aunt Louise, but Katy admits that she doesn’t really know much about her. She’s not really a relative, just a friend of her grandmother’s, and she and her mother call her Aunt Martha out of habit. They decide to investigate the rest of the items in the drawer, but they know they have to be careful about how they do it to avoid causing chaos or attracting too much attention from other people.

Investigating Aunt Martha’s magical items leads the girls on fun adventures. The boots turn out to be seven-league boots, and Louise and Katy decide to test them by walking to Florida to go swimming in November. However, they go the wrong way and end up in Mexico instead. There, they meet a girl named Pilar. They help Pilar to weave some straw place mats with the help of their magic gloves, and Pilar lets them ride on her donkey, Pepe.

The girls start to suspect that Aunt Martha is actually a witch, based on her magical objects and Katy’s mother’s description of her. The girls panic when they accidentally lose the key to the drawer with all the magical objects in it down a drain, and Katy’s mother gets a letter saying that Aunt Martha is coming to visit. What will the girls do if Aunt Martha discovers that they’ve been using her magical objects, and what if they have to admit that they lost the key to the drawer?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

Ruth Chew is known for writing stories about magic and witches for kids, but what I like about these stories is their gentleness. I think that’s also part of what makes other people nostalgic for these books because they’re very gentle and comforting to read. The kids in the stories have magical adventures, and they get into some minor trouble because of them, but nothing really stressful or dangerous happens. It’s a relatively low-stakes adventure, but sometimes, that’s exactly what you want when you want to relax. Things generally work out well in the end, and it wouldn’t be a bad story to read to kids as a bedtime story.

Aunt Martha is a witch, but she’s a nice witch. She knows what the girls have been doing, and she doesn’t mind. In fact, it is implied that she left these items there for Katy to use one day. It isn’t fully explained why she did this or just how much she knows about the girls’ activities. It seems like their adventures were basically the end in and of themselves, like Aunt Martha just wanted Katy to have some magical fun. That’s typical of Ruth Chew’s magic books. They don’t often explain much about the origins of the magic, and things are often wrapped up at the end without the characters really knowing everything. The characters don’t really seem to mind not getting all the answers because they’ve had their fun, and they’re satisfied with that.

This book has a typical Thanksgiving play of the kind held by many American schools in the mid-to-late 20th century. I’m not sure what schools do in the 21st century, but I also remember plays with Pilgrims and Indians (Native Americans) from when I was a kid in the 1980s and early 1990s. By the time I was in school, teachers were urging kids to use the term “Native Americans” instead of “Indians”, although people were still saying “Indians” as the generic because it was what kids heard from tv, books like this, and things other people said. As an adult, I really do prefer “Native Americans” to “Indians.” It’s a little longer to say when you’re speaking out loud, but it does help to distinguish “American Indians” from Indians from India, and it can be awkward if someone has to ask what kind of Indians you’re talking about. It’s also generally what Native Americans seem to prefer, if someone isn’t naming their specific tribe, and it’s best to call people what they prefer to be called. Nobody in the book discusses this because the Thanksgiving play is just background, an opportunity for the girls to try on the bathrobe and discover that it’s magical because they need something for a costume.