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!
