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The witches, common sense media reviewers.

Boy and his grandma fight scary witches in classic tale.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Youngsters will learn a little about the physiolog

Even the tiniest creature can be a hero.

The little boy uses his intelligence and problem-s

For a book without much graphic violence, The Witc

No profanity, but the witches talk about kids smel

Grandmamma smokes cigars.

Parents need to know that Roald Dahl's 1983 book The Witches is a highly entertaining fantasy novel with scary and suspenseful scenes. A young orphaned boy goes to live with his grandmother in Norway, and she tells her grandson true (in the world of the book) facts about witches. Dahl's superior inventiveness…

Educational Value

Youngsters will learn a little about the physiology of mice. For example, their hearts beat 500 times per minute -- so fast that it's impossible to distinguish the sound of individual heartbeats.

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

The little boy uses his intelligence and problem-solving skills to beat the witches with their own tricks.

Violence & Scariness

For a book without much graphic violence, The Witches is pretty scary. The witches -- who are known to make kids disappear -- discuss chopping off mouse tails and heads. A restaurant cook chops off two inches of a mouse's tail, and it hurts and bleeds for a while afterward. Two other mice are thrown against a wall. Additional scenes keep the reader on edge with the threat of danger and suspense.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

No profanity, but the witches talk about kids smelling like "poo" or "dog's droppings."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Roald Dahl 's 1983 book The Witches is a highly entertaining fantasy novel with scary and suspenseful scenes. A young orphaned boy goes to live with his grandmother in Norway, and she tells her grandson true (in the world of the book) facts about witches. Dahl's superior inventiveness as a storyteller is on full display in the tales Grandmamma tells, and in her descriptions of the physical characteristics that distinguish witches from humans. As in so many of his wonderful works, Dahl also depicts a special, loving relationship between a child and an adult who's not his parent. Grandmamma is a doting caretaker with some singular quirks. She smokes cigars, for example. There's a little violence in the book, especially against mice: A tail is partially sliced off, and two mice are hurled against a wall. However, the threat that the witches will use their evil sorcery against children is what makes the book scary -- perhaps too scary for some kids.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (3)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Way to scary for little kids (I have read it when I was 4 Year,s old)

What's the story.

The little orphan boy in Roald Dahl's THE WITCHES lives with his Norwegian grandmother, who tells him scary facts about witches. It's a good thing she knows these things, because the boy is prepared to protect himself the first time he encounters one. Grandmother and grandson are informed that his parents' will requires that they live in England. Though they are both loath to leave Norway, they move to England, and the boy attends school there. They plan to return to Norway during his summer holidays. However, Grandmamma becomes ill, and her doctor insists that they not travel until she's recovered. They choose a seaside hotel in England for their vacation instead, and there the boy happens upon a sinister meeting of witches. He listens in and is alarmed to hear the witches plot against all the children in the country. With help from Grandmamma, the little boy must find a way to evade the witches and stop their nefarious plans.

Is It Any Good?

This entertaining novel is full of surprises for young readers, though some are pretty scary. As in so many of his books, Dahl creates a fantastical world in which an innocent child sees right and wrong, and solves problems, more effectively than many adults. Dahl also has a knack for inventing original, compelling characteristics, so that his witches aren't just mean and scary, they're uniquely weird. Fortunately, the witches' creepiness is counterbalanced by the warm, charming relationship between the young boy and his cigar-smoking Grandmamma; they make a great team. Kids who have enjoyed other Dahl novels will certainly enjoy The Witches, especially if they like the thrill of getting a little scared.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the way the witches look and behave in The Witches . How are they similar to, or different from, witches in other stories you've read or watched?

Have you read other books by Roald Dahl? How does this book compare to his other novels, such as James and the Giant Peach or Matilda ?

Did you think this book was scary? What were the scariest parts?

Book Details

• Author : Roald Dahl
• Illustrator : Quentin Blake
• Genre : Fantasy
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Puffin Books
• Publication date : January 1, 1983
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 8 - 12
• Number of pages : 224
• Available on : Paperback, Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
• Last updated : March 27, 2020

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Book Review

The witches.

Readability Age Range

• Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Books
• The Whitbread Award, 1983; Federation of Children's Book Groups Award in the UK, 1983;The New York TimesBook of the Year, 1983

Year Published

This fantasy book by Roald Dahl is published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Books. It has also been published by many other publishers.

The Witches is written for kids ages 7 and up. The age range reflects readability and not necessarily content appropriateness.

Plot Summary

An unnamed 7-year-old boy loses both parents in a car crash. He finds comfort with his Norwegian grandmother — a cigar-smoking senior with a penchant for telling tall tales. But what she tells him about witches isn’t just another story.

Witches, she insists, are real. They have blue saliva and large, scalloped nostrils that allow them to smell children from long distances. They wear gloves to hide their claws, wigs to hide their hairless scalps and fancy shoes to hide their toeless feet. Flames flicker deep within their ever-changing eyes, and they have one burning desire: to rid the world of children. Recognizing a witch before she tries to squelch you is a child’s only hope of survival. ( Squelching refers to the tactics witches use to get rid of children.)

In accordance with the wishes of his dead parents, the boy and his grandmother move to England. While there are fewer witches in England than in Norway, English witches have a reputation for being vicious. On one occasion, the boy narrowly escapes being squelched by hiding in a tree until suppertime. The boy and his grandmother plan to spend their summer vacation in Norway, but his grandmother falls ill and is unable to go. Instead, they book two rooms at a hotel in Bournemouth, England. The boy’s grandmother gives him a present of two white mice to keep him occupied during their stay.

While trying to find a quiet place where he can train his mice to walk a tightrope, the boy stumbles across an empty ballroom reserved for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSPCC). Assuming the meeting has already occurred, the boy hides behind a screen at the back of the room. But when the room begins to fill with women, the boy realizes they are witches in disguise. He watches the Grand High Witch take off her mask and reveal her ugly, rotting face. He sees her fry another witch to death by shooting sparks out of her eyes. He listens to her expound on her plan to squelch all of the children in England by turning them into mice, using her newly developed Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker.

The boy sees Formula 86 in action when a gluttonous boy, Bruno Jenkins, arrives and demands six chocolate bars that the Grand High Witch had promised him if he showed up at the meeting. Bruno is transformed into a mouse but runs away before the Grand High Witch can kill him. Just as the meeting is ending, a witch smells the boy hiding behind the screen. After a brief chase, he is captured and forced to swallow the contents of an entire bottle of Formula 86. He turns into a mouse and runs away to find his grandmother, who is understandably shocked at his transformation.

She recovers rapidly and helps the boy (now a mouse) hatch a vengeful plot against the witches. The mouse-boy steals a bottle of Formula 86 and pours it into the pea soup the witches will consume for dinner. Massively overdosed, the witches turn into mice in the hotel dining room and are promptly dispatched — and dismembered — by the hotel kitchen staff. The boy’s grandmother returns Bruno, as a mouse, to his family.

The mouse-boy’s grandmother takes him to her home in Norway where she modifies her house so he can live in it more comfortably. He learns that as a mouse, he has a shorter life span and will likely not outlive his grandmother. Far from being disappointed at the news, he is glad that he will never have to face life without her. His grandmother learns that the Grand High Witch’s secret headquarters are located in a Norwegian Castle. As a mouse, the boy is now in a position to sneak into the castle and turn all the witches into mice. (Cats will then be introduced to solve the mouse problem.) He and his grandmother plan to travel the world for the rest of their lives, until they have turned every witch into a mouse.

Christian Beliefs

The boy’s grandmother believes her soul will go to heaven when she dies. She attends church daily and prays before every meal. Crossing your heart and praying to heaven is mentioned as a last-ditch attempt to escape being squelched. The Devil is described as a being that people know exists, even though nobody has ever seen him.

Other Belief Systems

Witches, while real, are not human. They are described as animals or demons in human form and are members of an organized secret society. They have access to powerful magic, which they use primarily to squelch children in remarkably creative ways. To a witch, children smell worse than fresh dog droppings. A witchophile is described as someone who studies witches. Ghouls and barghests are mentioned.

Authority Roles

The boy is closer to his grandmother than to his parents. His grandmother respects the parents’ last wishes by moving from Norway to England so the boy can continue his education at a British school. While his grandmother is a formidable woman, her unconditional love and care for the boy are apparent throughout the book.

Profanity & Violence

There are several uses of heck . Other epithets include Oh heavens and Jeepers Creepers . Creative insults include boshvolloping and brainless bogvumper .

The boy’s parents die in a car accident. The boy is also in the car but escapes with only a cut. The boy is traumatized by the event, but few details are mentioned. The boy’s grandmother is missing a thumb. It is suggested that her thumb was lost during a childhood encounter with a witch. The boy speculates about how it could have been removed: twisted off, burned by a boiling kettle or pulled right off her hand.

Squelching is a term used to describe how a witch gets rid of a child. Some squelchings are more macabre than others. In one case, a boy is turned into a talking porpoise, but another child turns to stone and yet another child becomes a figure in an oil painting. One of the witches’ favorite ways to squelch a child is to transform it into a creature that adults will kill, such as a mouse, slug or flea. Witches take special pleasure in transforming children into animals that adults will kill and then eat, such as a pheasant or mackerel. It is said that American witches turn children into hotdogs, which are then consumed — with relish — by their parents. During some squelchings, the victims’ skin shrivels.

Beneath her beautiful mask, the Grand High Witch has a terrible, rotting face. She kills another witch by shooting sparks out of her eyes. The sparks burrow into the victim’s skin until she is nothing but a pile of ashes that smells of burnt meat. She also sings a violent song about squelching children, expressing the desire to boil their bones, fry their skin and otherwise bash, mash, shake, slash and smash them to bits. When the boy’s pet mice run into the open, the Grand High Witch kicks them viciously.

The recipe for making Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker includes chopping the tails off mice and frying them in hair oil, then simmering the mouse bodies in frog juice.

The boy feels his school is a cruel place. On one occasion, a boy with nits was forced to dip his head in turpentine, which lifted the skin off his scalp. Bruno Jenkins kills ants using a magnifying glass. The main character pushes him to make him stop. Children — and witches — are turned into mice and then killed.

Sexual Content

When the boy’s grandmother tells a taxi driver that the mouse she is speaking to is actually her grandson, the taxi driver remarks that mice are quick breeders, and she should expect great-grandchildren shortly. As a mouse, the boy runs up a man’s trouser leg and then runs down the other leg. Too late, the man takes off his pants to get rid of the mouse.

Discussion Topics

If your children have read this book or someone has read it to them, consider these discussion topics:

• Why doesn’t the main character like Bruno Jenkins?
• How does the Bible say we should care for animals?

What would you do if you saw someone being cruel to animals?

Why do people eat more than they need?

• Why do people boast about how much stuff they own?

How can you keep from eating and having more than you need?

How do the boy and his grandmother plan to get rid of all the witches?

• Do you think they will succeed? Explain.
• What would you do if you were in the boy’s place?

Are he and his grandmother doing the right thing? Explain.

The boy has a very close relationship with his grandmother.

• Which trusted adults in your life do you most enjoy spending time with?
• Do you share any special activities or traditions together?
• What do you like most about these people?
• What lessons could you learn from them?

Additional Comments

Smoking: The boy’s grandmother smokes cigars. She offers him one, saying that if he smokes he won’t catch a cold.

This review is brought to you by Focus on the Family, a donor-based ministry. Book reviews cover the content, themes and world-views of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. A book’s inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

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Home / Find a book / The Witches

The Witches

By Roald Dahl

248 reviews

A real witch gets the same pleasure from squelching a child as you get from eating a plateful of strawberries and cream. What’s even more unnerving is that real witches don’t look like witches. So how can you tell when you meet one? This story reveals all about a most gruesome gang of witches.

I like the rat part.

Witches were always wicked and mean. But when the witch turned Bruno into a mouse then his grandmama.

My interests were how much they taught us about witches and what they do, even if it is non fiction

The grand high witches face and speech.

This book is an amazing story and a pure masterpiece I'm sure every child would love to read this book and there is only 1 thing wrong about this book it is that you just cant stop reading it.

A good book I loved it it was fiction I liked the Grand high witch

It is not as scary as the movie but I am always curious about the next part

Although this book was a little spooky I still loved it. I especially loved he liitle white mouse. I was obsessed with this book for days. I highly recommend this book who are fans of witches.

This book was a hooking with lots of uncanny twists and turns. I will recommend this book to children that love mystery stories and the world of Roald Dahl!

Brilliant, would definitely recommend. This story has some scary elements but that makes the story more fun and interesting to read. Love how brave the boy is (his name is never given). We enjoyed the boy and his grandmother’s determination, their bond was really sweet. Great story

I like when the boy gets captured and turned into a mouse and then runs away. This book is good for everybody, except for people who are really scared because the witches are a bit frightening.

It shows mice aren't just a nuisance, the boy pets 2 and teaches them to walk across tightropes and imagines being at a circus for it.

This is a really good book. I recommend it.

My favourite character is the little boy that has no name I would recommend this

A very interesting plot. I liked it because it was about a family, and my favourite one was Granma :)

I really enjoyed reading it

What will become of witches now?

It is sooo good you should definitely read it

It interesting because it tells you about the world of witches and what they do to humans.

The witches, is a great book! It is a funny story for children to read.I rate this book a 5 as it’s a great book!

I liked this book. I have read it multiple times. It is full of suspicion and laughter. I was shocked to find out that the witches actually turned the boy into a mouse by pouring Delayed-Action-Mouse-Maker. I was also shocked to find that being a mouse is an advantage if you want to poison the witches by sneaking a potion from their room and pouring it into their soup!

I like the book. Recommendation - Read during cold, windy nights.

I give this book 10 points! It was very interesting to read. I recommend this book for you to read!

Amazing even watched the movie

It's interesting when you see what the witches actually look like no hair, pointy feet and their hands but the leader is the most powerful and dangerous one.

It is very scary and fun to read

It was quite good. I found it fairly interesting when Bruno turned into a tiny little mouse. The Boy. Definitely.

Fiction. I like the best the Great witch

I thought it was scary when the boy went into the witches meeting room which was described as prevention from cruelty to children. If i were him i would run for my life before the doors got locked people they were actually trying to destroy ALL children. The head with was hideous and had powers to set witches on fire for being rude.I liked the grandma best because she was kind and protected her grandson.I would recommend it to other people because it was interesting.

I loved this book! My favourite part is when the witches take off their masks and make themselves look really wierd! I like all of the describing words used. I would recommend this book to a friend.

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Roald Dahl's The Witches

Where to watch.

Rent Roald Dahl's The Witches on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

The Witches misses a few spells, but Anne Hathaway's game performance might be enough to bewitch fans of this Roald Dahl tale.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Robert Zemeckis

Anne Hathaway

Grand High Witch

Octavia Spencer

Stanley Tucci

Mr. Stringer

Kristin Chenoweth

Older Hero Mouse

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The Witches Hardcover – Special Edition, August 27, 2013

When the young hero of Roald Dahl's story is orphaned in an automobile accident, he is left in the care of his aged grandmother―a formidable cigar-smoking lady who happens to be a retired expert on dealing with witches. In spite of her warnings about how to spot these horrific creatures, her grandson accidentally wanders into the annual convocation of the witches of England―and overhears the horrifying plans in store for every child in the country. But before he can escape to reveal the witches' plot, he is captured and turned into a mouse. However, he is no ordinary mouse and this is no ordinary tale. Along with a new introduction--in which James Patterson guarantees this book will "get kids addicted to reading!"--this thirtieth-anniversary edition includes photographs, reproductions of original manuscript pages, and a fascinating and funny reminiscence by editor Stephen Roxburgh on working with Roald Dahl.

• Print length 240 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 7 - 9
• Dimensions 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date August 27, 2013
• ISBN-10 0374384592
• ISBN-13 978-0374384593
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

About the author.

Roald Dahl 's wonderful and outrageous tales continue to delight children the world over. Some of his most beloved stories include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and The Witches.

Quentin Blake is Children's Laureate of Great Britain, has won the Kate Greenaway Medal, and is the author and/or illustrator of many books. He lives in London, England.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); Special edition, 30th Anniversary (August 27, 2013)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374384592
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374384593
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 7 - 10 years, from customers
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 9
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• #3,281 in Teen & Young Adult Classic Literature
• #4,386 in Teen & Young Adult Wizards & Witches Fantasy

About the author

The son of Norwegian parents, Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 and educated at Repton. He was a fighter pilot for the RAF during World War Two, and it was while writing about his experiences during this time that he started his career as an author.

His fabulously popular children's books are read by children all over the world. Some of his better-known works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and The BFG.

He died in November 1990.

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‘The Witches’ Review: Anne Hathaway Gives a Flamboyantly Fun High-Camp Evil Performance in Robert Zemeckis’ Hellzapoppin’ Remake

Transplanted to the American South, a new version of Roald Dahl's witch tale stays on the surface in a buzzy way.

By Owen Gleiberman

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When it came to dreaming up characters of cheeky grandiosity who were put on earth to act out their fear and loathing of children, Roald Dahl didn’t play. In 1961, his first classic novel, “James and the Giant Peach,” featured the loathsome Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, who tormented James like nightmare Victorian spinsters out of Dickens. The title character of “The Enormous Crocodile” wants nothing more than to chomp down on children. In “Matilda,” Miss Trunchbull is a school headmistress so sadistic she’s like a bullying tyrant out of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” And in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” even that rock star of candy Willy Wonka can’t seem to make up his mind about whether he wants to delight children or unsettle them.

But in “ The Witches ,” Dahl really went all out. The book is a primal fairy tale, part Grimm and part flamboyant kiddie opera, about an orphan vacationing with his grandmother at a majestic hotel, where he has a run-in with a coven of witches. They’re attending a meeting presided over by the Grand High Witch, a preening fascist harpy who possesses a potion that can turn children into mice (which she wastes no time doing). Her signature trait, however, is the deluxe hatred that pours out of her like poison. Did Roald Dahl have some deep-seated personal issue (he spoke of the abusive behavior he experienced at boarding schools), or was he just a storyteller with the courage to create unbridled wackjob kiddie villains? Maybe a little of both.

In the 1990 screen version of “The Witches,” directed by Nicolas Roeg, the Grand High Witch was played by Anjelica Huston in a performance of pure delectable scenery-eating kitsch. She was a comic foil out of Mel Brooks, and also the purest of monsters. Thirty years later, Robert Zemeckis has now directed a version that remains true to the novel (and also builds on the earlier film), and what he brings to it is his fusion of relatability and FX gizmo play. It’s nothing more than a baroque cartoon horror film (it stays right on the surface), but the best parts have a crackpot malevolence that’s hard to resist.

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Anne Hathaway , as the Grand High Witch, has been outfitted with a set of severe nightmare trappings that are sure to frighten little ones: a bald head concealed under a series of wigs that cause her to have a terrible scalp rash; arms that stretch out into groping mangled claws; a long middle toe on an otherwise truncated foot; and, most strikingly, a mouth extended back by scars (just like the Joker’s), which gives her an enlarged smile as creepy as the ones in the 1994 David Lynchian music video for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.”

The triumph of Hathaway’s performance is that she never allows the visual effects to dominate her; she acts from inside them, wearing them like makeup. Speaking in an accent that’s like Boris and Natasha by way of Donald Trump’s wives (“Vut vould you do if dere ver mice running all around dis hotel?”), she gives a seething performance that’s two parts “Mommie Dearest,” two parts Wicked Witch of the West, one part “Alejandro”-era Lady Gaga cranking up all the stops, one part Divine, and two parts meth junkie. It’s a whale of an over-the-top evil diva turn, one you can sit back and revel in just for how she pronounces the word “garlic” (“ goooord -lick!”). She makes Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent look like a wallflower. She’s high-camp funny but also genuinely threatening. All of which is to say that Hathaway acts this flamboyant she-demon with the conviction that only a sensational actor can bring to a throwaway movie.

The rest of “The Witches” is serviceable in a standard hellzapoppin’ way. For a while, it feeds on the audacity of transplanting the story to the American South, where our hero (Jahzir Bruno), an 8-year-old child in Demopolis, Alabama, in 1968 (in the credits he’s referred to simply as “Hero Boy”), loses his parents in a car accident and moves in with his warm, wise, whiskey-swilling Grandma (Octavia Spencer).

She tries to lighten his mood with fried chicken and cornbread and Motown tunes, but once they arrive at the Grand Orleans Imperial Island Hotel, a swank getaway set behind a curtain of magnolia trees along the Gulf of Mexico (her cousin is the executive chef there), the film mostly loses its real-world sense of period. There’s one eye-catching set: the Grand Imperial Ballroom, which looks like the Sistine Chapel by way of “The Shining.” It’s where the witches let their hair down, literally, under the guise of holding a convention of the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. And it’s where our hero gets vaporized by a vial of purple potion and turned into a mouse.

So does Bruno (Codie-Lei Eastick), a face-stuffing British kid, and Daisy (Kristin Chenoweth), the hero’s pet mouse, who it turns out has already been the victim of this transformation. The three are now CGI rodents scurrying around the ornate ledges and kitchen shelves of the hotel like something out of “Mousehunt” or “Ratatouille.” These scenes are fun in a logistically energized but slightly flavorless way. You could say that “The Witches” doesn’t have much in the way of emotional pull, and that there are too few layers to its battle against evil. Yet Anne Hathaway’s performance provides the film with a sick-joke center of gravity, and Zemeckis, sticking to Dahl’s elemental storyline, stages it all with a prankish flair that leaves you buzzed.

Reviewed online, Oct. 19, 2020. Rated: PG. Running time: 105 MIN.

• Production: An HBO Max release of a Warner Bros. presentation of an ImageMovers, Necropia, Esperanto Filmoj production. Producers: Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Luke Kelly. Executive producers: Jacqueline Levine, Marianne Jenkins, Michael Siegel, Gideon Simeloff, Cate Adams.
• Crew: Director: Robert Zemeckis. Screenplay: Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris. Camera: Don Burgess. Editors: Ryan Chan, Jeremiah O’Driscoll. Music: Alan Silvestri.
• With: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Jahzir Bruno, Codie-Lei Eastick, Stanley Tucci, Chris Rock, Charles Edwards, Morgana Robinson, Eugenia Caruso, Simon Manyonda.

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• May 14, 2020

Book Review: The Witches by Roald Dahl

• Book Reviews

If Dahl were alive today, he might be particularly bothered by the fact that the 1990 adaptation of his 1983 novel, The Witches , has had the same (or, more probably, slightly more) cultural staying power than the novel it loosely adapts. Indeed, Dahl is on record as having called the adaptation “ utterly appalling ,” yet for a disturbing interpretation to his work, the film remains a cultural touchstone. Until now, my only knowledge of The Witches was my early experiences with the film, a product more deeply terrifying than its quirky and twisted literary predecessor. And, so, like many readers of Dahl’s works, I have a different experience of this particular work, moving backwards from adaptation to the original with a clear sense of bias towards the former.

The Witches is a curious work, both quirky and a tad twisted. The novel follows an unnamed English boy who falls under the care of his Norwegian grandmother after the untimely death of his parents. The grandmother regales her newfound charge with all sorts of tales, the favorite of which are her stories about being a retired witch hunter. When his grandmother falls ill, they vacation in a fancy hotel in Southern England to promote her recovery, which turns out to be the location for the annual meeting of witches. The boy, naturally, stumbles upon the witches, discovers their dastardly plot to rid England of all the pesky children, and suffers a tragic fate that drags his grandmother out of retirement. It’s a story of evil witches and myth, children turned into mice, and the unwavering stupidity of English high society.

As a novel, The Witches has the characteristic quirkiness of all Dahl creations, filling its early pages with delightful anecdotes and amusing witch facts. These early chapters are part of a frame narrative that reminds the intended reader — children — that this is a story with a somewhat comical nature — witches are a silly bunch of monsters — and that everything will be alright in the end (sorta). This takes some of the edge off from what otherwise might be an objectively terrifying premise. The witches, after all, despise children with every fiber of their being and have concocted elaborate schemes and costumes to hide their existence from humanity while abducting and killing the world’s children. Witches, like Soviet spies in a Cold War film, could be anywhere! The frame narrative also sets the stage for the kind of story we’re about to receive: a tale about deliberately caricatured witches and a world blissfully unaware of their existence. In retrospect, it’s weird that such a small portion of the novel is actually dedicated to witches as characters rather than witches as stories, but one can be forgiven for not knowing that witches are truly living among us and requiring a little extra prodding to come to that realization.

The novel shines most when it is dedicated to the boy’s interaction with and response to the titular characters. The introduction of the witches as an organization of women concerned with the protection of children both highlights their monstrosity and cleverness in one glorious sequence of chapters. Caricatured though they may be, the witches command a degree of respect even from our hero. As Sean Bean might say: one does not simply walk into a meeting of witches. Yet, our hero isn’t entirely helpless; his attachment to his mice, who he plans to train as part of his very own mice circus, is our first indicator of his abilities: he is tenacious and brilliant, sucking up the information his grandmother gives him to devise his own brand of witch hunting tactics. If anything, I wanted to see more of his collaboration with his grandmother. The witches are a hydra not easily swayed by a few witch deaths, even if witch reproduction is never quite explained. Where might this story go if their collaboration continued? What clever plans might the witches devise under the guise of a different Grand High Witch? I also hope you’ll forgive me if I could not help seeing Anjelica Huston in the role of the Grand High Witch; my childhood was long ago tainted by traumatic experiences with movies meant for kids.

The historical context behind the novel is also worth mentioning here, as it adds a dimension that parents certainly were aware of at the time of release. Published in 1983, Dahl’s book arrives at a time of heightened awareness of child abductions across the West. Just three years prior, the United Kingdom and the United States both signed the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, which was designed to increase cooperation for the return of children between signatory nations. As a child of the late 80s and 90s, I remember the dramatic shift in awareness of child abductions and some of the high profile cases that led to more vocal “stranger danger” campaigns, school assemblies, etc. It’s hard not to see The Witches as in some way an early commentary on the period, one which offers a more disturbing answer to the swirling question of “why.” Likewise, the novel might fit the cautionary tale mold found in fairy tales, a dimension parents might recognize in markedly different ways from the novel’s intended child audience. The witches themselves, after all, effectively rely on the public’s inability to provide answer to the disappearance of children, a fact uttered in almost explicit turns by the Grand High Witch and by the grandmother. These thoughts churned around in my head as I read this book, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t affect how I thought about the witches or the light tone of the narration. This book is, I’d argue, far more serious than it lets on.

One final curiosity: The Witches has been occasionally banned for perceived misogyny. I find this critique amusing, especially in light of the fact that many classic adult works have remained in those libraries — and if you spend any time among classic works of literature, you’ll find a sea of attacks on women. The Witches , I’d argue, is more complicated than the criticism suggests, as is the case with almost all book challenges. The novel clearly indicates that all of the witches are and can only be women and that real witches are far more dangerous than male specters of similar type. This is a curious essentialism. However, the grandmother serves as a direct counterpoint by being both competent, knowledgeable, and more put together than all of the male characters except her precocious grandson, who is presented to us as an untrained but brilliant tactician. If anything, the novel unintentionally highlights the standards and expectations of English womanhood, something which the witches must adhere to so as not to be found; but given that, again, the witches are villains who merely adopt these standards for their villainy, this is an incomplete commentary.

Perhaps the novel’s greatest flaw is something the film ultimately resolves: the ending is an invitation to a sequel that never materializes. This is made more concerning in light of the fact that the boy repeatedly reminds us and his grandmother that being turned into a mouse isn’t all that bad. I imagine we’re meant to see being a child and being a mouse as relatively similar positions, but they’re obviously not even if the boy’s mousehood offers a temporary advantage when dealing with witches. Ending with only a fraction of the real problem resolved probably won’t bother others as it did me. I am, if anything, a weird reader who occasionally wants ambiguity and occasionally wants closure; here, I wanted closure because the witches really are monstrous baddies.

Overall, The Witches is a fun and generally pleasurable fantasy from a master of the craft. I don’t consider it the pinnacle of Dahl’s work, but it does precisely what a Dahl book should do: delight with silliness and fun without shirking on its responsibility to be just a tad creepy.

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Book Reviews

The Witches by Roald Dahl: Book Review

Our young British protagonist and his Norwegian grandmother know something that we don’t: Witches are real and they live among us. They look like sweet neighbor ladies but they’re keeping a lot of secrets. Chief among them? They want to wipe out the children of the world.

When Grandmamma and Grandson (do we ever learn his name?) go on vacation to the coast of England, they stumble on the annual witches’ meeting, led by The Grand High Witch herself. The witches have a plan to eliminate all the children of England at once! That won’t happen if Grandmamma and Grandson have anything to say about it.

Confession: I remember starting to watch this movie when I was little and spending the night at my grandmother’s house but it scared me to death. We had to turn it off. I told my husband this and he asked, “How old were you?” I looked up the release date of The Witches . It came out when I was 12. 12! And I was probably 13 by the time it came out on video or on tv or however I happened to catch it! What can I say? I was sheltered. And Anjelica Huston intimidates me to this day. I can just imagine facing her as a tween, on a screen or not. *shudder*

Now that I’m firmly in my 30s, I’m brave enough to read the source. It was so much fun! It was (obviously) scary and suspenseful enough to satisfy most children but it had an element of silliness and impossibility that captures the imagination. There’s really no such thing as a bald witch with claws, no toes, blue spit, and a removable face. But what if there were ? *shiver*

I enjoyed Grandson’s bravery and Grandmamma’s willingness to let him take risks for his own well-being and that of others. How often do adults trust children with things like that? Probably not often enough if you’re looking through the eyes of a child. I also liked that Grandson turns what could be a disability into a strength. He never lets anything hold him back. In fact, he embraces the changes that come his way.

I absolutely loved the introduction, “A Note About Witches.” “In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.” And in a suitably alarming tone, the facts about witches are laid out.

I loved the illustrations by Quentin Blake as well. They were silly but scary enough to match the story.

There’s a group of sheltered kids, like me, who this won’t be appropriate for. But if you and/or your child like a fun little fright, give this one a try. I’m glad I finally gave the book a chance. Now maybe I’ll be brave enough to try the movie again for Halloween…

I wish I could find a source I really trusted for this, but many, many sites seem to agree that the reason The Witches has been banned/challenged is because it’s misogynistic. Too bad they all seem to refer back to the same article . We’ll go with that though. As a woman who shies away from the “feminist” label and the negative connotations its acquired, I do nevertheless consider myself to be a feminist in its most basic terms, i.e. equality. It never even crossed my mind that I should be offended by this book. It’s about witches. Witches are females. Always have been, probably always will be. Maybe a female author will write a children’s book entitled The Wizards or The Warlocks and even things up. As a child, how many authority figures that you interact with regularly are female? Moms, teachers, librarians, school bus drivers–mostly women, at least in my experience. I felt the book was supposed to be a little subversive and challenging to authority. That would be mostly women in a child’s world. I think that’s slowly changing but it’s still a reality today. And besides, all this just feels like someone is over thinking things. Grandmamma is obviously a woman and she’s a hero! Some people just have no sense of humor.

Read an excerpt .

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I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s , my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books . I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site. My opinions are completely my own.

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‘Roald Dahl’s The Witches’: Review

By Tim Grierson, Senior US Critic 2020-10-21T16:01:00+01:00

Robert Zemeckis and Anne Hathaway unite to take on the children of the world this Hallowe’en

Source: HBO Max/Warner Bros

‘The Witches’

Dir: Robert Zemeckis. US. 2020. 104mins.

Full of spectacle but short on magic, Roald Dahl’s The Witches finds Robert Zemeckis leaning hard on action-adventure and CGI, leaving audiences with a busy and sentimental tale that displays little of the wit or sophistication that Nicolas Roeg brought to his 1990 adaptation. Anne Hathaway has fun camping up her role as the Grand High Witch, who has a nefarious plan for all the world’s annoying little children, but on the whole the film is surprisingly impersonal — a far cry from the enchanted, heartfelt entertainments that Zemeckis once delivered.

The Witches favours technology over characters

The Witches begins streaming on HBO Max in the US on October 22, with a theatrical release planned internationally for October 28, where the Zemeckis name will draw audiences, alongside the presence of Hathaway and fellow Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer, and, of course, Roald Dahl fans. Arriving just in time for Hallowe’en, this Warner release may end up being unfavourably compared to Roeg’s version, though, which starred a majestic Anjelica Huston in the Hathaway role.

Set in Alabama in 1968, the film stars Jahzir Bruno as an unnamed boy who goes to live with Grandma (Spencer) after his parents die in a car crash. They have a warm rapport, but she wants him to know one thing: witches are real, and they’ve made it their mission to turn children into animals. After encountering one such witch, they escape to a posh hotel, only to discover that a witch convention, led by the fearsome Grand High Witch (Hathaway), is taking place at the same time.

The 1983 book, as visualised by Roeg, preserved Dahl’s sense of mischief and dark humour. (In addition, his use of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop for some of the effects gave the film a lovingly handmade quality.) But where that 1990 film respected its young audience’s intelligence and wasn’t afraid to feature some genuinely upsetting images — including shots of the witches without their disguises — the Zemeckis remake tends to be cutesy and juvenile.

With a screenplay co-written by Zemeckis, Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, the new adaptation emphasises life lessons — specifically, the idea that your character is more important than your outward appearance. And while that would seem to be a meaningful moral for a film in which the boy and his new friend Bruno (Codie-Lei Eastick) will both get transformed into mice by the witches, Zemeckis mostly recycles the same fervent tearjerking that felt far fresher in Forrest Gump and The Polar Express . Like that latter picture, The Witches favours technology over characters, and as a result we never really feel close to this melancholy child. (Chris Rock’s strenuously enthusiastic narration as the now-grownup orphan does nothing to help.)

Hathaway recalls Huston’s performance by affecting a comically thick German accent, but her portrayal isn’t as terrifying as her predecessor’s. The actress has a gift for slow-burn exasperation, which can occasionally be delightful. (And the massive jaw with razor-sharp teeth that has been provided to her by the effects team is the film’s best CGI.) But like the boy, this villainess feels like an afterthought at the mercy of Zemeckis’ set pieces and digital trickery.

Much of the film’s emotional burden is put on Spencer, whose character must lift the boy’s spirits and also figure out how to outsmart the Grand High Witch’s scheme. Sadly, however, Grandma isn’t particularly compelling, although Spencer has it better than Stanley Tucci, who plays a one-note Southern caricature as Mr. Stringer, the anxious hotel manager who tries to maintain order even after discovering he has a rat infestation.

Dahl’s stories understood the complexity of childhood, and by maintaining the author’s original backstory for the boy, Zemeckis suggests that real-world horrors like losing one’s parents can be just as terrifying as anything a hideous witch could concoct. But the director doesn’t draw well-rounded performances from Bruno or Eastick, failing to capture the awe or confusion of youth. What we get instead are adrenalised chase scenes and needlessly showy special effects that lack charm. Joanna Johnston’s lavish costumes are a treat, and Gary Freeman’s handsome production design makes the hotel feel like a palace. But the soul of Dahl’s original can’t be reproduced as easily.

Production companies: ImageMovers, Necropia, Experanto Filmoj

Worldwide distribution: Warner Bros.

Producers: Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke, Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, Luke Kelly

Screenplay: Robert Zemeckis & Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, based on the book by Roald Dahl

Production design: Gary Freeman

Editing: Jeremiah O’Driscoll, Ryan Chan

Cinematography: Don Burgess

Music: Alan Silvestri

Main cast: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, Jahzir Bruno, Codie-Lei Eastick, Kristin Chenoweth, Chris Rock

• United States

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The new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches is incredibly strange and almost offensively bad

The Witches is a weird, unfunny lesson in how not to adapt Roald Dahl’s classic — and problematic — horror tale.

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Share All sharing options for: The new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches is incredibly strange and almost offensively bad

Many movies that fail to win critical regard still frequently succeed as entertainment, if only because they turn into delightful excuses for their actors to have fun. One might certainly expect this to be the case for The Witches , Robert Zemeckis’s new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic, horrifying children’s novel, now streaming on HBO Max.

But I must, alas, report that no one — on-screen or off — is having enough fun to save The Witches from being a dull and puzzling thing. While Anne Hathaway as the head witch seems to love swanning around the great coastal Alabama hotel to which Dahl’s witches have bizarrely arrived, no one else seems to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps it’s because the premise of this new version of The Witches inexplicably overlays two separate stories onto one another, and no one else in the cast is quite sure which one they’re in at any given moment.

Are they in a story where a young Black boy in the post-Jim Crow South confronts racism and ethnic hatred through the thinly veiled guise of a convention of kid-ocidal witches? Or are they in a macabre , modern-ish cautionary tale, one where boys can meet monsters and be forever altered at the whimsy of a delightfully unpredictable universe?

If you’re not sure these two stories go together, you’re not alone : The Witches isn’t sure either. Despite the film’s quizzical efforts to blend them together, the two halves never cohere into something that makes much sense — or remotely justifies the strange execution.

The Witches is an oddly literal adaptation, except when it’s a wild departure

The Witches , transplanted from its original Nordic and English setting to 1960s Alabama, recounts the delightfully morbid story of an unnamed Boy (Jahzir Bruno) who moves in with his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) after the death of his parents. Shortly thereafter, he encounters a witch at the local drug store, and his grandmother, something of a spiritualist herself, initiates him into a world in which child-hating murderous witches are everywhere. These witches, unfortunately, look exactly like the typical woman of the ’60s: They always wear wigs and nice shoes, they have giant expanding nostrils, and they always wear gloves.

Not long after this revelation, the Boy comes face to face with not only one witch, but an entire huge coven of witches who’ve all assembled — where else? — at a large hotel convention. And it’s, ironically, held at the very same hotel to which he and his grandmother have traveled to try and escape the witch! Because his grandmother has taught him how to recognize a witch, he immediately realizes what he’s stumbled upon. The results are calamitous (and genuinely creepy) for the Boy.

At first, Zemeckis’s version of The Witches appears to be made to order. But Dahl’s novel is really less about a story than it is about a feeling, a sense of things being terribly disordered, unreal, and unfair. This is where everything quickly goes awry.

Roald Dahl, the author of childhood classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , James and the Giant Peach , and Matilda , gave us a body of work that feels almost intrinsically British. In the classic tradition of British children’s literature, he represents the world to children as a cold and indifferent place, in which wonders, magic, and human kindness are rare, sought-after treasures. In a Dahl story, children are often abused by their caretakers and other indifferent adults until they discover some form of fantastical escape. His work built on and influenced the youth-oriented fantasy genre, with series like Harry Potter later providing direct echos of Dahl’s work.

It’s important to understand this context because, when you watch The Witches , you’re hit with the discrepancy between Dahl’s story world — where the universe is both randomly cruel and full of random mystical delights — and the “real” world in which Zemeckis sets his film. Zemeckis’s The Witches takes place in a post-segregated Southern Alabama, where Black life is still radically unequal to that of white Southerners, and where a Black woman staying at a grand hotel on the Gulf is so extraordinary that the Black bellhops jaw-drop at the sight of her. This dissonance is striking even if you’ve never cracked open a Dahl story.

In Dahl’s version, the Boy is originally Norwegian and encounters witches after moving to England with his cigar-smoking granny. In Zemeckis’s version, co-written by Zemeckis, horror icon Guillermo Del Toro, and Girls Trip screenwriter Kenya Barris , the Boy’s grandmother is a tough , determined homemaker who coaxes her grandson out of his grief with helpings of cornbread and plenty of Motown.

Spencer, typically a master of comedic timing, has too many elements working against her to pull that off here, starting with a script that can’t quite figure out what her deal is. Is she a sensitive grandmother masking her own grief in order to care for her grandson, a voodoo practitioner with a secret life, or a would-be adventuress? It’s hard to know what the film intends her to be. Then again, it’s equally hard to know what the film itself intends to be.

Is it a campy, rollicking farce with a touch of rosy pastel-tinged nostalgia for ... a South that’s barely past segregation? Is it a creepy, sinister children’s tale? Particularly when compared to the classic 1990 film adaptation from horror icon Nicolas Roeg, it’s certainly not very scary — which is probably the worst thing to be said about a movie based on a book whose witches are terrifying. In the original novel, there’s a truly chilling moment when our narrator, the Boy, realizes that all the women in the room he’s trapped in are wearing gloves. We never come close to anything that scary in Zemeckis’s version of The Witches because we’re all assumed to be in on the joke that the witches are in the hotel the whole time.

But the joke just isn’t that funny. As the head witch of the coven, Anne Hathaway’s Grand High Witch is both Catwoman and the Joker, with a hilariously overwrought German accent. While Hathaway has her moments of melodramatic fun, she’s the only actor who does.

And then there’s the matter of race. Even though on the surface, Zemeckis is faithfully retelling Dahl’s story of a boy and a coven of witches, he’s also giving us a story of a Black boy facing racial and class prejudice in the South that resonates with the American political climate today, even if the prejudice has been dialed back so far as to be barely more than a hint. Every Dahl story puts the trappings of white British privilege front and center, pitting our maligned waif hero against snooty rich children and their terrible parents. When that story gets transplanted onto the story of Southern life, however, it inevitably feels much different.

Dahl’s stories depend upon their hyperbolic caricatures of childhood and adulthood for much of their whimsical appeal and their ability to speak directly to young children. It’s difficult for an American viewer to find this kind of hyperbolic whimsy, however, in a recently desegregated South. It’s even harder when the potential for larger world-building around the theme of racial injustice seems to have been utterly ignored. (What does it mean that a boy would rather be a mouse than a boy in America? There’s a question ripe for exploration — but The Witches doesn’t think to ask it, let alone suggest an answer.)

In the Witches novel, what’s striking about the narrator and his grandmother is their aloneness in the world — they really only have each other. But in Zemeckis’s version, Spencer’s character lives in a small town, goes to church, visits her local shopkeepers, and has a whole history of growing up in a Depression-era community where witches were apparently a part of the local lore. But whatever community she’s a part of is only shrugged at, never brought to bear on her actions or the story itself.

What’s even more glaring and strange is that in a community of church-going Black women in the 1960s, where most women typically wore nice shoes and gloves, just like witches, the film doesn’t attempt to address the problems that would inevitably arise if you’re a kid trying to decide who is and isn’t a witch. The film could raise this extremely obvious question, and because it’s chosen to take Black characters living in a Black community as its heroes, you’d think it would. That it doesn’t just adds to the level of disconnect between Zemeckis’s impulse to inject modern-day diversity into The Witches and the all-British story he’s telling.

But perhaps we should discuss why a modern retelling of The Witches would want to be diverse. Because the other crucial piece of context for The Witches involves its subtext — and to understand it, we have to ruin your childhood a little. (Sorry.)

Roald Dahl was an anti-Semitic, misogynistic misanthrope

Roald Dahl is one of the most celebrated children’s authors who ever lived. But he was also indisputably one of the most bigoted. He was a profound anti-Semite, perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes and falsehoods — like that of Jewish people controlling the economy and the publishing industry. In 1983, Dahl, then 67, told The New Statesman that Jewish people “provoke animosity” and blamed them for being too “submissive” to fight back during the Holocaust. “I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere,” he said. “Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

Unlike, for example, the ongoing debates around H.P. Lovecraft’s racism , we know Dahl was anti-Semitic because he literally said so. “I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic,” he reportedly told The Independent in 1990. Still, despite these direct quotes to the media, critics were calling reports of Dahl’s anti-Semitism “ unjustified ” as late as 2009. And in 2016, Steven Spielberg, director of the Dahlian adaptation BFG , expressed disbelief that someone who could write such a kindhearted book could really be anti-Semitic. Spielberg argued that, as a classic misanthrope, Dahl often said contentious things just to aggravate others. “Everybody in his life, basically, his whole support team, was Jewish,” Spielberg added.

Dahl might have surrounded himself with Jewish staff, but that doesn’t mean he treated them well; in fact, Dahl’s increasingly anti-Semitic attitude toward staff members at his longtime publisher, Knopf, ultimately led to Knopf’s extraordinary decision to fire him as a client late in 1980 — though that was also because Dahl was allegedly horrible to the staff in general. Dahl has also been widely read as a misogynistic writer, in large part due to the openly misogynistic theme of The Witches , in which women are literally demonized for dressing up, feminizing their appearances, and framed as monsters lurking inside seemingly sweet and complacent disguises. They’re also coded as anti-Semitic, with large, hooked noses, reptilian features, a ready stash of mysterious cash, and a plot to take over the world and kill children, all tropes derived from longstanding anti-Semitic conspiracies. (As a bonus, while I’m ruining your childhood, Matilda, a sweet telekinetic orphan, was originally meant to be something of the villain of the book, terrorizing her parents instead of the reverse.)

Perhaps it’s an awareness of this troubled history and a desire to do better — or perhaps just a desire to engage in diverse casting — that sparked Zemeckis’s attempt to build his version of The Witches around Spencer’s character and her grandson. But if that’s the case, it seems the exercise hasn’t shown us much — except, perhaps, to underscore that a thoughtless kind of diverse representation isn’t much better than no representation at all.

The Witches falls apart because of its inability to reconcile its very different stories

Zemeckis’s version of The Witches seems to offer nothing whatsoever to attempt to remedy the embedded issues in Dahl’s original writing. The writers have chosen not to substantially re-work the story, not even to think through the ways a bunch of witches might manipulate their Southern gothic environment. (In Alabama, on the Gulf of Mexico, are there really no swamp witches around? No Cajun priestesses doing spells in moss-covered mansions or nearby pirate coves?) Then again, none of the witches really exist at all outside of their single-minded goal to squash children.

The anti-Semitism Dahl himself professed doesn’t necessarily play a role in most of his other works, but it’s directly relevant to The Witches , a story that’s explicitly about detecting imposters in the midst of society. This is, to be blunt, the theme of most anti-Semitic conspiracies throughout history, and has led in its most extreme form to the idea that Jewish people “hide” in plain sight while essentially controlling the world.

In The Witches , witches hide in plain sight by disguising themselves as ordinary women — but the tells that give them away are also coded as anti-Semitic: they’re bald beneath their wigs, have reptile-like hands and feet, and have noses that expand when they sniff out children. The grand high witch also speaks with a German accent, one that can easily pass for Yiddish.

The 1990 film unfortunately perpetuated all of these traits, and I hoped that Zemeckis’s version would take pains to shift its witches far away from this stereotype. But it’s not clear if any attempt was made to remove the story’s discriminatory bits. At least the hooked noses are gone. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Semitic coding ported over, especially when you’re also trying to signal a commitment to diversity by casting Black actors (and an entirely atonal Chris Rock as narrator) to deliver this story. It seems as though zero forethought or even insight went into the portrayal of the witches; and honestly, perhaps this movie needed to hire a culture critic as a consultant in order to save it from itself.

Perhaps that lack of insight about the film’s symbolism and coding is why everything else in The Witches just feels so off-kilter. There are shoehorned CGI mouse adventures that don’t feel remotely fun; the CGI effects feel flattened against the perpetually pastel tones of this movie, and our talking mice are given very little character development outside some cursory backstory (and some obligatory fat-shaming of Boy’s portly friend Bruno, because it wouldn’t be a Roald Dahl adaptation without some fat-shaming). And given Stanley Tucci’s vacillating faint Southern accent, for example, he doesn’t seem to be entirely sure where he is, just like it’s not entirely clear whether racism exists in this universe or not.

Y’all, Kristin Chenoweth is in this film, and I was so discombobulated I didn’t even notice her — that’s how weird this film is.

The Witches is a children’s film, and perhaps this deep overanalysis proves that children’s films should never be subjected to this much rigorous scrutiny. But children’s films that endure are the ones that remain compelling in adulthood. With The Witches , so little thought has gone into the process of creation that it seems as though it’s destined to be a lesson in how not to adapt a problem-laden story for the 21st century.

It’s a cautionary tale, alright — just not the one the director intended to make.

Correction : A previous version of this article misstated Zemeckis' religion. He is Catholic.

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The Witches, by Stacy Schiff

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Review by Brit McGinnis

The narrative pushed by history buffs about the Salem Witch Trials is that the victims of this hysterical part of American history were wise women who had rare knowledge. But the truth is much more complicated.

In her book, The Witches , author Stacy Schiff challenges us to think past our own biases and see to the true historical heart of the Salem Witch Trials . Through incredibly detailed and research-informed writing (that allegedly required eight research assistants), Schiff paints a portrait of an incredibly complicated time in history full of extreme stress. In learning about this time period, we can think more critically about our own society and how it reacts to extreme turmoil.

But we can only guess. Fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were killed for the offense of witchcraft. We still don’t know why it happened. Modern attitudes about history may paint the Puritans as crazy. But Schiff is here to challenge everything we know about the people who accused – and died being known as – witches.

A Fuller Picture

As Schiff points out, modern people have a certain view of the past that does not reflect what actually happened. Yes, the people who underwent the Salem Witch Trials were straight-laced Puritans who thought the devil could be found everywhere. But they also insisted that their children learn to read, to the point of socially shaming their neighbors who didn’t teach their children.

As Schiff explains in a chronological telling of this period in history, the accusations of witchcraft also didn’t come out of nowhere. Both the town and the village called Salem were broke, barely surviving but feeling pressure to care for increasing numbers of settlers (especially war widows). England-appointed governors were overthrown by local officials who cared little more for the people. With all the historical content she gives, it’s easier to see how an entire community snapped.

The Meaning of the Witch

In this period of history, people saw witches as people of any gender that could perform wondrous feats of magic due to a pact with the devil. With New England witches in particular, this ranged from flying through the air to coming out dry from walking on a wet road. Schiff suggests that more than anything, a witch was someone perceived as knowing more than everyone else around her. Witches admitted when they were tired or unsatisfied, taboo in a Puritan culture where idle hands were the tool of evil. Witches allegedly “sold their souls” for time to help with chores, travel, and nice shoes.

Schiff’s writing style can definitely be described as dense. The Witches is not an easy read, and all the names and concepts can at times become confusing. But it’s in these overarching concepts that her research-based writing shines. She widens our view of the world and humanizes the highly religious Puritans to people existing in a society as relatable as our own.

Complicated Victims (and Villains)

Schiff doesn’t paint the accused witches or the accusers as helpless. Her work to portray the people involved in this story as complicated reveals just how much more relatable the Puritans are than they have been portrayed in film and art. The accused slave Tituba was not a wicked voodoo sorceress in reality, but a cornered Indian woman who knew how to play the game in a devout society. One executed witch was a known thief. More than a few were objectively shady individuals who were disliked in the community for valid reasons. Parents likely nudged their daughters into accusing family enemies.

Schiff injects personality and human elements into a story, from a previous century, which truly makes this book worth reading. The themes of societal stress and how people express it continue to be relevant today. The book shines brightest when we understand the Puritans, stirring their porridge, looking over their shoulders and hoping they won’t see a man with a black hat and a book of names written in blood.

Brit McGinnis is an author and editor from Portland, OR. She writes on Medium , The Salve, and covers weird news for The Stacker. She was named a Hero of Haddonfield by the filmmakers behind Tales of Halloween in 2014.

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A community that “snapped” is an idea that resonates in a post-Jan. 6th world. Also, seeing how a highly-religious group (in Salem, the Puritans) finds a way to lay blame is an idea that relates to today, as science is shoved aside, and blame is put on women for seeking healthcare in this post-Roe generation. Just typing the words, “post-Roe,” brings visions of suffering, blame, heartache.

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Review: Stacy Schiff’s ‘The Witches,’ a Reign of Terror in 17th-Century Salem

By Michiko Kakutani

• Nov. 12, 2015
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The feverish Salem witch hunts of 1692 have become a metaphor not just for anti-Communist mania in the 1950s but for the larger strain of what the historian Richard Hofstadter has described as “the paranoid style in American politics,” and for all manner of conspiratorial hate-and-fear mongering, inquisitional madness and communal hysteria.

With her new book, “The Witches,” Stacy Schiff seems to have wanted to strip away the metaphors and go back to the original story of Salem. She gives us a minutely detailed chronicle of nine harrowing months in 1692, which began with the baffling afflictions of two girls (who complained of bites and pinches, and whose bodies “shuddered and spun”) and which led, in the midst of frenzied accusations of sorcery, to the killing of 20 people.

Before this epidemic in the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed, Ms. Schiff writes, “somewhere between 144 and 185 witches and wizards were named in 25 villages and towns”; 55 people confessed to witchcraft; 19 people, including a minister, were hanged; and another man was tortured to death by having rocks piled on top of his prone body.

It’s clear that “The Witches” entailed voluminous research, and Ms. Schiff does a sure-handed job of conjuring the strict, religion-centered world of late-17th-century Salem, using the same descriptive gifts she brought to her compelling last book, “ Cleopatra .” Although the sumptuous, gilded universe of ancient Egypt would appear antipodal to that of Puritan New England, the stories of Cleopatra and the Salem witches both share an operatic quality — and the challenge of capturing the daily realities of cultures seemingly light-years removed from our own.

But whereas “Cleopatra” and Ms. Schiff’s 1999 biography of Vladimir Nabokov’s wife, Véra (which drew a fascinating and nuanced portrait of a literary marriage), featured magnetic central characters, “The Witches” has a blurrily defined ensemble cast. “We know little about most” of the suspects, Ms. Schiff writes, “except that they were accused of witchcraft or confessed to it. They are like fairy-tale figures too in that we recognize them by a sole detail — a quirk of dress, a turn of phrase, an inner tremor.”

More perplexingly, Ms. Schiff has decided not to really address the social, cultural and psychological reasons behind Salem’s witch hysteria (much the same way she curiously declined to grapple with Nabokov’s literary achievement in “Véra”). She mentions various factors in passing — adolescent hysteria, score-settling among neighbors and family members, strict views on appropriate behavior for women, frontier fears of being ambushed or captured by Indians. But she never investigates such dynamics in any depth. As a result, her book lacks the depth-of-field of earlier works like John Demos’s “ Entertaining Satan ” and “ The Enemy Within, ” and Carol F. Karlsen’s thoughtful feminist take on the subject, “ The Devil in the Shape of a Woman .”

Instead, Ms. Schiff has written a straight-ahead narrative of the goings-on in Salem. Some of the visions and tribulations chronicled here still make us marvel at the energetic imaginations of the accusers and afflicted. The slave Tituba described being visited by a tall, white-haired man in a dark serge coat — accompanied by a yellow bird — who threatened to kill her if she did not torture children; the man would appear to her, variously, as “two red cats, an oversize black one, a black dog, a hog.”

Susannah Martin, a blacksmith’s widow, was accused of transforming herself into a ball of fire, turning a dog into a keg, and leaping through a window (disguised as a cat) to strangle a man in his bed. A minister is accused of biting people, and a swarm of witches (numbering, by different accounts, from 25 to 100) is said to have alighted in a meadow.

Of the accused, Ms. Schiff writes, “the youngest of the witches was 5, the eldest nearly 80. A daughter accused her mother, who in turn accused her mother, who accused a neighbor and a minister. A wife and daughter denounced their husband and father. Husbands implicated wives; nephews their aunts; sons-in-laws their mothers-in-law; siblings each other.”

Over several hundred pages, the depressing litany of charges starts to sound tediously repetitious — especially since few of the characters, aside from the imaginative Tituba, emerge as memorable individuals, and pale next to the characters that Arthur Miller fashioned in his play “The Crucible.” Readers of earlier books on the subject will also find much of the narrative of “The Witches” dully familiar. After all, as Ms. Schiff herself points out in a Smithsonian magazine essay: “Few corners of American history have been as exhaustively or insistently explored as the nine months during which the Massachusetts Bay Colony grappled with our deadliest witchcraft epidemic.”

The parts of this book dealing with the terrible miscarriage of justice are freshest and most resonant. Prosecutions were based on wild, irrational and unsubstantiated accusations. Guilt was often presumed, and confessions, coerced. As the contagion spread, Ms. Schiff writes, “it became less dangerous to accuse than to object.”

A 5-year-old girl — whose mother was to be hanged as a witch — was shackled, while other children were orphaned and left to fend for themselves. Suspects were thrown into fetid, lice-infested prison cells, and households of the accused were ransacked by a county sheriff and his men.

“The irony that they had come to the New World to escape an interfering civil authority,” Ms. Schiff writes, “was lost on the colonists, who unleashed on one another the kind of abuse they had deplored in royal officials. So was the fact that the embrace of faith, meant to buttress the church, would tear it irrevocably apart.”

Follow Michiko Kakutani on Twitter: @michikokakutani

The Witches

Salem, 1692

By Stacy Schiff

Illustrated. 498 pages. Little, Brown and Company. $32.

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Reader's Digest

20 Spellbinding Books About Witches That’ll Enchant Adults and Teens Alike

Posted: September 5, 2023 | Last updated: September 5, 2023

Enchanting books about witches

When I was growing up, I was terrified of witches and anything that evoked spooky autumnal feelings. I stopped trick-or-treating when I was in the third grade, and I refused to watch spooky movies in the fall—although I did watch Hocus Pocus every year ... with my hands covering my eyes at the scariest parts. That all changed when I started reading books about witches. I've always been an avid reade r , preferring to stick my nose in some of the best books rather than play in a pile of orange-hued leaves. Reading offers so many benefits, and over the years, books have helped me understand the world better and feel more empathy toward others—even, it turns out, witches.

Reading books about witches in the fall has become a tradition of mine. Luckily, this is something of a trending topic, so it's easy to find witchy women these days, whether they're in a cozy romance novel filled with sweet, small-town magic, an atmospheric horror book about witches that are up to no good or a historical nonfiction book about the plight of women accused of witchcraft throughout history.

As fall approaches, I get more excited about pulling up a cozy chair, making a steaming mug of tea and curling up with my cat and a good book. And while you could gobble up a Halloween book this time of year (or return to your favorite Halloween book for kids ), I suggest you grab one of these books about witches to get in the spirit.

Join the free Reader’s Digest Book Club for great reads, monthly discussions, author Q&As and a community of book lovers.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

Release date: July 1, 1995

Author Alice Hoffman is known for her bestselling magical realism books , prime among them 1995's Practical Magic . It made her the reigning queen of books about witches and is an ideal seasonal read—pick it up the minute summer temps start to cool. The story follows two witchy sisters, Sally and Gillian Owens, both cursed to lose any man who loves them. Sally lives a normal life while suppressing her magic, while Gillian embraces her powers but finds herself in toxic relationships. Confronting their curse, they learn the significance of sisterhood and the power of love. A few years after the book's release, the story hit the big screen with a Hollywood film adaptation that became a pop-culture phenomenon. I only discovered Practical Magic as an adult, but the entire four-book series is a must-read for any book lover.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

Release date: Oct. 13, 2020

This reimagining of history with a fantastical twist follows the three Eastwood sisters in 1893 New Salem. Reuniting after years apart, the sisters join the suffragette movement and begin fighting for their rights as witches and the voting rights for all women. When they're kicked out of the official movement, the girls band together and create a secret society, advocating for women's rights in a world where magic has been forgotten and butting heads as conflict over witchcraft builds. A New York Times bestseller, T he Once and Future Witches is Hugo Award–winning author Alix E. Harrow's spellbinding sophomore novel and a historical fiction fan's dream. It's an enchanting battle cry for all women, filled with magic and touching on real-world issues.

Looking for your next great book? Read four of today’s bestselling novels in the time it takes to read one with  Reader’s Digest Select Editions . And be sure to follow the Select Editions page on Facebook !

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

Release date: Aug. 23, 2022

This cozy book about a (very) secret society of powerful (and irregular) witches was one of the best fiction books that I read last year. Mika Moon is a solitary witch living in modern-day Britain. She conceals her magic by maintaining a quiet life, except for the very secret society of witches that she belongs to. But when an unexpected message invites her to Nowhere House to mentor three young witches, her entire life turns upside down. As Mika becomes entwined with the unusual family living there, including the captivating librarian, Jamie, she starts to embrace the possibility of belonging. The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is the perfect book to read on a crisp day, wrapped up in a warm blanket.

Love and Other Wicked Things by Philline Harms

Release date: Aug. 22, 2023

In the quaint town of Oakriver, 19-year-old Rhia is a quiet third-generation earth witch who loves plants and nature, and keeps her powers secret from the town. New arrival Valerie is a 17-year-old fire witch, who comes to town looking for answers about her mother's disappearance. Unlike Rhia, Valerie has no issues with using her magic out in the open. While these two teen witches are complete opposites, they find themselves drawn together and must face unsettling visions and dark forces that plague the town. To protect her home and newfound love, Rhia must embrace her true potential and confront the looming darkness threatening their lives. The just-released Love and Other Wicked Things features two LGBTQ book characters and is perfect for teens and adults alike.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

Release date: April 14, 2011

Sunny Nwazue has always felt like she doesn't fit in. She was born in New York City, but she's Nigerian; she has West African features, but she's albino; she loves playing sports, but she can't go out in the sun. Then Sunny discovers that she has latent magical powers and joins a quartet of magic students to learn and harness her abilities. The group must track down a dangerous criminal, but can they work together to overtake such powerful magic? Nnedi Okorafor's World Fantasy Award–winning book weaves magic and adventure into a lush world and has been praised by Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan, John Green and Ursula K. Le Guin. Akata Witch is the first title in The Nsibidi Scripts book series , and once you pick it up, you'll want to devour the rest.

Witchcraft Therapy: Your Guide to Banishing Bullsh*t and Invoking Your Inner Power by Mandi Em

Release date: May 4, 2021

Popular Instagrammer, wellness witch and author Mandi Em writes a not-your-average self-help book that explores how to deal with life's challenges through hands-on magical solutions. Witchcraft Therapy will teach you how to tap into your inner power and use intentions, mindful manifestation, divination and righteous indignation to cope with whatever life throws at you. In her fun, upbeat and friendly voice, Em manages to turn real-life witchery into a tangible and actionable expression that anyone can try.

The Witches of Bone Hill by Ava Morgyn

Release date: Sept. 26, 2023

This fantasy novel follows two sisters, Cordelia and Eustace Bone, who discover they are Nordic witches. After inheriting a Victorian mansion from their late aunt, the sisters must travel to a small town in Connecticut and sort through the estate. In the process, they uncover family secrets, face a mysterious enemy and must embrace their lineage to survive and heal. The Witches of Bone Hill promises romance, suspense and self-discovery in a magical world featuring a quirky band of characters.

Playing the Witch Card by KJ Dell'Antonia

Release date: Sept. 12, 2023

Playing the Witch Card is billed as Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic , which was enough to sell me! If that's not enough to hook you, know that the book continues the fine tradition of focusing on magical female-driven families. Flair Hardwicke inherits her grandmother's bakery in Kansas, and while she knows magic is real, after she finally leaves her cheating husband, she is convinced love isn't. Refusing to continue her Nana's fortune-telling side business, Flair accidentally bakes a batch of Tarot card cookies that unleashes the family's power. Chaos ensues: Her first love returns, as does her unpredictable mother and magic-obsessed daughter. Flair must confront her magical heritage to navigate the powerful new witch in town—one who isn't nearly as reluctant or careful with her powers. I can't wait to read this fantasy romance book while sitting outside on my porch watching the crisp leaves fall.

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark

Release date: Aug. 21, 2018

P. Djèlí Clark's Alex Award–winning The Black God's Drums takes place in an alternate New Orleans caught in the middle of the Civil War. Creeper is a wall-scaling girl who longs to escape the city and catch a flight on the airship Midnight Robbe. She uses top-secret information about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon called the Black God's Drums to secure a spot on the flight. But Creeper harbors her own secret: She carries the voice of Oya, an African orisha, in her head. Creeper, Oya and the airship's crew embark on a perilous mission to prevent the devastating weapon from destroying New Orleans. If you're looking for more books by Black authors to add to your shelves, definitely pick up a copy of this must-read novel.

Mooncakes by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker

Release date: Oct. 15, 2019

Nova Huang is not your average teen witch. Working alongside her grandmothers in their bookshop, she assists with loaning out spell books and investigates supernatural encounters in their New England town. One night while exploring the woods for a reported white wolf, Nova comes across Tam Lang—who just happens to be her former childhood crush. Nova and Tam must work together to confront the forces threatening them while also acknowledging that their feelings for each other have been rekindled. Mooncakes joins the ranks of other heartwarming and inclusive stories that prove feel-good fiction is here to stay. This sweet graphic novel is packed with stunning and colorful witchy visuals and is perfect for both young adult and young-at-heart readers.

The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling

Release date: Sept. 28, 2021

Nine years ago witch Vivienne Jones cast a seemingly harmless curse on her ex-boyfriend. Nearly a decade later, the heartbreaker Rhys Penhallow returns to Graves Glen, Georgia, and Vivienne learns her curse may not have been as ineffective as she thought. Calamities strike Rhys one after another, and pretty soon, Graves Glen is under attack. While it's hard to deny Rhys and Vivienne are feeling some serious chemistry, they must focus on finding a way to break the curse before it's too late. Bestselling thriller and YA novelist Rachel Hawkins writes the New York Times bestselling T he Ex Hex , and other popular paranormal novels, under the name Erin Sterling. Whatever her nom de plume, you can expect the same stellar storytelling.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Release date: Feb. 8, 2011

Diana Bishop looks like any bookish scholar—except she also happens to be a descendant of witches. When she discovers an old enchanted manuscript hidden within Oxford's Bodleian Library, she accidentally summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates alongside handsome vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. A Discovery of Witches is the award-winning debut and the first book in the All Souls fantasy book series . (It's also a popular three-season TV series streaming on AMC+ and other platforms.) Author Deborah Harkness is a professor of history, so you better believe the historical elements are top-notch.

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais

Five octogenarian witches live in Moonshyne Manor, but when an angry mob arrives to demolish their house, the women soon learn that they're behind on their mortgage payments. Determined to save their home, the witches try risky bargaining and attempt to use their aging powers to fight evil and threatening forces. Pick up The Witches of Moonshyne Manor if you love to read about the magical powers of female friendship and the destructive force of secrecy. This book makes me secretly wish I could retire with a gaggle of witch besties in my own version of Moonshyne Manor.

What Became of Magic by Paige Crutcher

A veteran author of books about witches, Paige Crutcher is back with a story about a witch who can talk to ghosts. What Became of Magic hits bookstores in September, perfect timing for your autumn reading. Aline Weir has kept her powers hidden and lives a solitary life, helping lost souls find their way home. After stumbling upon a book in her favorite bookstore , she discovers that her powers are enhanced. When she goes on an adventure to a town that doesn't exist on a map, Aline must decide if she's willing to use her powers for a dangerous mission that only she can complete.

The Witch's Daughter by Paula Brackston

Release date: Dec. 1, 2008

Elizabeth "Bess" Hawksmith is 384 years old, and The Witch's Daughter is the story of her long, fantastical life. In 1628, she discovers her mother hanging for witchcraft and asks warlock Gideon Masters to ensure the same fate never finds her. Instead, she unleashes a different type of curse, spending centuries in solitude. But her life takes a sudden turn when she's befriended by Tegan, a curious teenage girl. Bess treats Tegan like the daughter she never had and begins teaching her the ways of the hedge witch. But Gideon will stop at nothing to reclaim Bess's soul―and she must do everything she can to protect Tegan from the warlock's dark powers.

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

Release date: Oct. 16, 1990

Rowan Mayfair is a brilliant neurosurgeon who is completely unaware that she comes from a long line of witches, but she does know she has special powers. When she brings a drowned man back to life, the two become drawn to each other—and soon discover that the man has an unexpected and frightening new power. As the pair join forces, an immersive tale ensues, spanning continents and centuries. The Witching Hour is the first book in a three-book series by award-winning and beloved author Anne Rice (you probably recognize the name from her bestselling vampire novel , Interview with the Vampire ). Once you've gobbled up the entire Lives of Mayfair Witches series, catch the TV adaptation on AMC+.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Release date: March 6, 2018

Zélie Adebola lives in a world where the land of Orïsha once thrived with magic and Maji possessed unique magical abilities. That all changed when magic vanished one tragic night—a merciless king ordered the killing of Maji, leaving Zélie without her mother and her people in despair. Now, she has the chance to strike down the monarchy and bring power back to Orïsha. But to do so, she must control her growing power and overcome the feelings she has for the enemy. Children of Blood and Bone is a gorgeously written instant New York Times bestseller, and though it weighs in at 544 pages, you'll speed through the book and move on to the second in this teen book series , Children of Virtue and Vengeance .

Weyward by Emilia Hart

Release date: March 7, 2023

Set in three different timelines, Weyward is an enchanting novel about three women spanning five centuries. In 2019, Kate flees London and her abusive ex and hides in a crumbling cottage she's inherited from her late aunt. But it doesn't take long for her to realize there are many secrets lurking. In 1619, Altha has been charged with the murder of a local farmer—the town believes she's a witch who cast a spell that led to his death. In 1942, Violet is trapped in her family's ramshackle mansion, longing for the education that her brother has received. Her deceased mother remains a mystery, the only thing left of her an old locket with the initial W engraved on it and the word Weyward scratched into the baseboard in her bedroom. This is the perfect book for women (and men!) who devour stories by Sarah Penner and Sarah Addison Allen. I read this one over a snowy and stormy weekend and adored each of the characters in it.

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Release date: Sept. 6, 2016

Alex, a powerful bruja, has despised magic since the day it made her father disappear. She's looking forward to her Deathday, when she'll finally be free from her magic. But during the ceremony, a curse goes awry, causing the rest of her family to vanish and forcing Alex to absorb all the magic from her family line. Intent on rescuing her family, she asks an ambitious brujo named Nova for help, and together they journey to Los Lagos, a mysterious realm. During the journey, Alex uncovers profound revelations about herself, her abilities and her family, altering her life forever. Labyrinth Lost is the first book in the Brooklyn Brujas series, a queer Latinx fantasy series for teens that'll appeal to readers of all ages.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Release date: Dec. 1, 1958

Set in Colonial Connecticut in 1687, The Witch of Blackbird Pond is a classic children's book about 16-year-old Kit Tyler, who faces suspicion and disapproval upon arriving from Barbados to live with long-lost relatives. Struggling to belong and remain true to herself, she befriends Hannah Tupper, labeled a witch by colonists. Their forbidden bond forces Kit to make a heart-wrenching choice between her feelings and her duty. The Newbery Medal–winning novel has made banned books lists for promoting witchcraft—despite the fact that neither of the characters are witches. It's a historically significant book about community, challenging the status quo and friendship.

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A WITCHES' CANON

Part 3: the nice and naughty of operative witchcraft.

by Roy H Blunden ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 8, 2024

A well-crafted guide to the magic of witches.

Blunden offers a guidebook to the art of witchcraft.

The rising popularity of Wicca and New Age ideas since the 1960s and 1970s has brought witchcraft to levels of public acceptance unseen for over a thousand years in the West. Despite this, laments the author, the pop culture version of Wicca has “led to the divorce of the celebratory and religious aspects of Witchcraft from its operative magical aspects.” In other words, there simply aren’t enough witches today who understand the guiding principles of magic that undergird their religion. This concluding book in a three-volume set that outlines the history and practicalities of witchcraft aims to recenter magic’s place in “Operative Witchcraft.” Providing highly technical explanations of magic, from rituals to spells, the book’s approach is based on the four principles of the “Witches Pyramid” (imagination, will, faith, and secrecy). Because it is “the easiest form of magic to perform,” love-magic (along with sex-magic) plays a leading role in the book’s narrative, which emphasizes the ethical code of Wiccan Witchcraft: “An it harm none, do as ye will.” A lifelong witch, Blunden knows the intricacies and practicalities of magic and offers readers a solid historical overview of the faith, challenging modern Wiccans who reduce their practice to an “Ancient Religion of Protest” defined less by its own magical history and more by its role as a foil to Christianity. The author’s detailed narrative is never overwhelming and eases readers into complex topics with an accessible writing style in text that is accompanied by ample charts, diagrams, and other visual aids. As the concluding volume in the series, the book also includes robust appendix material that offers readers a synopsis of the Goetic Elementals, a glossary of important terms, and a lengthy bibliography. Those inside Wiccan communities will be challenged to deepen their knowledge of witchcraft, while readers outside the faith are given a rare look into an ancient religion.

Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2024

ISBN: 9781525587603

Page Count: 366

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: April 29, 2024

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | HISTORY | GENERAL NONFICTION

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by Roy H Blunden

THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES

by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.

In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“ Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression .” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”

Pub Date: April 23, 2024

ISBN: 9780593536131

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | GENERAL NONFICTION

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IndieBound Bestseller

A WEALTH OF PIGEONS

A cartoon collection.

by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020

A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.

The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.

Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker . So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny .” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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by Steve Martin ; illustrated by Harry Bliss

by Steve Martin

by Steve Martin & illustrated by C.F. Payne

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Spirit Guides The White Witch Podcast

• Spirituality

Hi Witches Join me on todays episode where we are looking at Spirit Guides, what they are, what they do and how you can further connect with them. Website I found particularly good for this episode https://www.spirituallyinspired.co/spirit-guides/ Our book review in this episode is Starling House by Alix E Harrow Find my zine The Hedge Witch's Broomstick here along with other wheel of the year zines - Etsy - TheWhiteWitchCompany - Etsy UK The White Witch's Book of Healing: The White Witch's Book of Healing: Weaving Magickal Rituals throughout your Craft for Sacred Healing and Reclamation of the Wild Witch Within: Amazon.co.uk: Rose, Carly: 9781914447266: Books Find me on Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/130512693-carly-rose My new website - The White Witch Podcast Sign up to my Patreon - The Witches Institute - The Witches Institute | creating Podcast episodes, Online Workshops, Grimoire Sheets | Patreon Each month I release either a folklore tale, ghost story or give you the story of a historical haunted or witchy location. I release two Hedge Witch Studies per month with grimoire sheets for you to add to your book of shadows covering a power animal, crystal and plant/tree. Each month I post an exclusive Patreon podcast episode, You will receive grimoire sheets for The White Witch Podcast also. We also have our amazing witchy community to interact with, our Patreon has been running for over a year so if you join now you will have access to a ton of witchy content in our back catalogue. Its just £6 per month please check out our link to find out more and sign up! Thank you for listening. Lots of love Carly xx Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-white-witch-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Witch review – occultist gothic horror takes a swerve into the psychedelic

In a wholly original turn, writer-directors Craig Hinde and Marc Zammit spin out an atmospheric, but orthodox British horror into realms of multiverse-type mind expanding entanglement

A fter kicking off with an atmospheric but orthodox piece of hoary British witchfinder gothic, Witch takes a genuinely unexpected and ambitious swerve after 45 minutes; as if writer-directors Craig Hinde and Marc Zammit had divined a scenario through a Ouija board during a fly agaric bender in the small hours. Divulging it would earn a dose of the ducking stool, and in any case it’s not quite clear that all the details hold up. But to broach the general nature of their devilry, it zooms this story of religious persecution out into a multiverse-type entanglement.

In 1575, the Horned One appears to have targeted the town of Dawnbrook; a woman takes to its streets carrying her parents’ severed heads. But at the murderer’s trial, blacksmith’s wife Twyla (Sarah Alexandra Marks) unexpectedly finds herself in line for a 16th-century cancellation when the accused fingers her as a diabolic accomplice. The uncanny thing is that this development was predicted by Thomas (Russell Shaw), the raving drifter about town who, given the pentangle-covered grimoire he is carrying, probably bears listening to. So she, staunch hubby William (Ryan Spong) and this dungeon-dodging Gandalf head for the woods.

What is revealed to them is genuinely mind-expanding, ripping open the obscurantist horizons of a backwater painted in thorough civic detail by Hinde and Zammit; from the enterprising bar keep, amazing the locals with the miracle of gin, to the officious sheriff. It feels living, bustling and malodorous. But given how the pair readily summon up sharp, backlit traditional Hammerish ambience on cue, they disappointingly don’t go one stage further towards the kind of intense psychedelic visuals that, say, Ben Wheatley might have wreathed Thomas’s spaced-out concepts.

Quite a bit of the acting is also missing some period patina, only partly redeemed by a gristly turn from Daniel Jordan as the judge champing at the bit to purify Dawnbrook. Meanwhile, the particulars of how the occultist party plans to execute its mission do get a bit hard to decipher – possibly indulging in the storytelling dark arts, like convenient vagueness, on the way. But if Witch, in the words of the goat from Robert Eggers’ near-identically named 2015 film, doesn’t quite live deliciously, it does show a freethinker’s willingness to experiment.

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