Posted on by TracyC

The Witch Family

The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes, 1960.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Reaction

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

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Worst Witch Strikes Again

The Worst Witch Strikes Again by Jill Murphy, 1980.

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

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

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

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

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

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

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Worst Witch

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy, 1974.

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

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

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

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

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

My Reaction

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

No Such Thing as a Witch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Reaction

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

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

What the Witch Left

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

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

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Book of Wizard Craft

The Book of Wizard Craft by Janice Eaton Kilby, Deborah Morgenthal, and Terry Taylor, 2001.

One of the things I thought was interesting about this book was that it was published at the height of the popularity of Harry Potter, and many of the things in this book are clearly meant to appeal to Harry Potter fans, referencing activities and pieces of folklore included in the Harry Potter books. My mother gave this to me when it was new because I liked the Harry Potter books, and because my birthday is close to Halloween, she thought I could use some of the ideas in the book for one of my Halloween birthday parties.

The book is divided into chapters focusing on different types of crafts (the “craft” part of the title literally refers to arts and crafts, not “witchcraft”, although there’s a play on words there), activities, decorations, and recipes. Some of these could fall under more than one category. Aside from the crafts and activities, each chapter also has sections of folklore about magic, wizards and witches, supernatural and mythological creatures, and superstitions. The information about folklore and superstition don’t always directly relate to the main subject of the chapter.

Chapters in the Book:

Wizard Regalia – This chapter is about how to make pieces for wizard-themed costumes, including hats, robes, wands, and cloaks. I thought the instructions for making a turban were interesting because wizards are typically known for wearing pointy hats. I think it was included because Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter wore a turban. There are also instructions for making an hourglass pendant, like Hermione’s time-turner. Good for dressing up for Halloween! This chapter also includes folklore about famous wizards and their animals and poltergeists.

The Decorative Arts – This chapter is about how to make wizard-themed room decorations that could also make good decorations for a Halloween party. The decorations include a magic carpet, a magic mirror, a crystal ball, and bats and stars. The folklore for this chapter includes explanations about the hand of glory (not as another craft project, thankfully), screaming skulls, and headless ghosts. (I kind of wish that the headless ghosts were included in the costume chapter because that is a fun kind of costume to make, but then again, it’s not a wizard costume, so it wouldn’t really count.)

The Art of Horticulture – This chapter is all about things to do with plants. There are instructions for making a container garden and a terrarium with carnivorous plants and for planting a fairy circle with flowers (fairy rings that occur naturally are fungi). There are also instructions for carving “Shrunken Mandrake Heads” out of apples. I’ve seen that Halloween craft before, just called “shrunken heads.” The folklore includes additional information about plants and also information about fairies and giant spiders and snails.

The Art of Animal Husbandry – This chapter contains a field guide to mythological creatures and also apothecary activities. I thought at first that the things an apothecary might make would have gone better in the plant section, but their ingredients supposedly come from animals. The activities are to make things like narwhal bubbles, unicorn horns, and dragon scales, which are supposed to be used in making other things, although later recipes in the book don’t use them. It’s just for play. The folklore in this chapter includes superstitions about animals.

The Book Arts – This chapter is for all things related to writing. There are instructions for making your own journal and scroll, quill pen, and black ink and invisible ink. The folklore includes information about the Druids, King Arthur, and pharaoh’s curses.

The Art of Astronomy – This chapter is about constellations and astrological signs. It shows you how to make flashlight covers so you can shine constellations on your ceiling. There is also a folklore section about creatures like werewolves, vampires, and ghost dogs.

The Art of Alchemy – This is the chemistry chapter of the book. There is a “magic potion cook book” of non-edible recipes for things like fake blood, slime, quicksand, and color-changing water. The folklore section of this chapter explains who alchemists were and about their search for the philosopher’s stone, the protected object of the first Harry Potter book.

The Art of Amusement – This is the party-planning section of the book. There are more decorations in this section and instructions for making crackers of the sort that contain small party favors. There is also a cookbook of edible recipes that would make good party food for a Halloween party, like bat wings (really chicken wings), petrified tree cookies, and crystal candy. The folklore/activities of this chapter are about methods of fortune-telling, including reading palms and tea leaves. (Personally, I thought some of the decorations would have been better in the chapter about decorations, and I would have liked to see more party games in this chapter. I think some of the games that I included on my Halloween Ideas site would be good.)

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

Posted on by TracyC

Witches & Magic-Makers

Eyewitness Books

Witches & Magic-Makers by Douglas Hill, 1997.

I always liked the children’s nonfiction Eyewitness Books because of their fascinating historical details and, especially, their pictures. I have to admit that I used this particular book for a college essay about witchcraft trials because, not only did it provide a good beginning overview on the topic but because, for some reason, books intended for adults tend to skimp on or forego pictures entirely. That always bothers me because there are so many things that can be explained better with a picture than a wordy description.

This book is about the history and legends of witches, wizards, and folk magic around the world. The concept that certain people have an ability to use magic for good or evil is an ancient one, found all over the world. The images we have of the sort of people who can use magic come from a variety of sources, from ancient folklore and legend to modern books and movies.

Real-life people who claimed to have the ability to practice magic or were suspected of doing it were very different from the fictional stories. From ancient times, people who were believed to have magical powers were both revered and feared. Ordinary people wanted the power of magic when they thought it could protect them from harm, heal their illnesses, or tell them important things about the future, but they were also afraid of the harm someone with magical abilities might do to them.

When witches were feared to be evil and harmful, they could be arrested, imprisoned, put on trial, tortured, and even executed. The book explains about witchcraft trials, including a section on the famous Salem witchcraft trial.

I particularly liked the pages in the book that explain specific things that witches and other magic-makers are believed to do and that show the objects and ingredients they use to conduct their spells. There is a page that shows magical amulets of all kinds, which are supposed to bring good luck or protection to their wearers. I noticed that some of these cross over into religion because they are specifically religious jewelry. It might be a matter of belief whether their effects would count under “magic” or the “power of the divine”, but I’ve always thought of magic and divine power as being separate. The linking quality here seems to be about physical objects that are believed to have a power that their owners wouldn’t have without them.

There are also sections about how people would use magic to try to tell the future and about the types of ingredients included in magic potions. (Actual results not guaranteed. I find it interesting, but I’m a skeptic.)

Of course, concepts like these vary around the world. Even when different societies share a belief that some people have the ability to use magic to do things like heal people or tell the future, they have different ideas about how that can be accomplished. The book has separate sections devoted to explaining the concepts of magic in different parts of the world, like Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. The final section in the book explains modern beliefs about New Age magic and Wicca.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Chinese).

My Reaction

I already explained at the beginning about how much I like the Eyewitness Books and how I’ve used them before. I really think this series is fascinating and informative for adults as well as kids.

It occurred to me that this particular book is probably about the most potentially controversial book in the series, at least the most potentially controversial one I’ve ever covered. However, I’m not too concerned about it because this isn’t a how-to book about witchcraft. It’s more about history and folklore. I find folklore, history, and culture interesting, but I don’t actually believe in all of the things this book describes as magic.

I did once have an extremely brief foray into magic when I was about 10 years old, which I explained when I covered The Witches of Hopper Street, but I’m a person who comes with limits, which is basically the point of that particular story. I’m still not sure what book I read that time, but whatever it was, it had requirements that I realized I would never want to even try to meet. Let’s just say that people who feel like I do about animal entrails are probably not cut out to be witches, at least not the traditional kind. Since then, my interest in witchcraft has been limited to history and folklore, not actual practice.

As far as Wicca goes, I don’t know too much about actual practice, but for those curious about how it evolved, I recommend this documentary (not child-appropriate) on YouTube about the founder, Gerald Gardner. I love a fun eccentric, and as someone who grew up watching Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, I have to say that, if you’re going to try to curse someone with magic, I think Hitler is a justifiable target.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Juniper

Juniper by Monica Furlong, 1990.

Young Ninnoc was born the daughter of a chieftan in Cornwall. She was raised as a princess in her father’s castle and educated as young royalty. She is generally loved and cared for, but there is one person in her father’s household who doesn’t like her, her father’s sister, her aunt Meroot. Ninnoc doesn’t know why her aunt hates her, but she knows early in life she can’t trust her. Meroot isn’t even nice to her own young son. She has ambitions for her son to be a great warrior, so she forces him to start training him early and purposely keeps him hungry and in discomfort to toughen him up. Ninnoc is friends with her cousin, and she and her nurse offer him food and comfort in secret. Her cousin really wants to be a musician, but his mother would never allow such a thing.

As the only daughter of a king, it initially seems that Ninnoc’s eventual fate will be to marry and to rule after her father, along with her future husband. However, Ninnoc begins showing signs early in life that she has other talents. It begins when she playfully joins a group of men who are dowsing for water, and she is the one who finds it. As she grows older, she also discovers a talent for healing when she heals her cousin’s wounds after his battle training. She adopts an orphaned baby owl as a pet, and when she realizes that she can hear it talking to her, both she and her cousin realize that Ninoc has a talent for magic. Strangely, her cousin comments that his mother also seems to have this ability, something that makes Ninnoc uneasy.

Ninnoc’s father trusts Meroot more than he should because he is strangely fond of his older sister, but Ninnoc and his mother know that Meroot harbors deep resentment toward them. Ninnoc’s father made Meroot one of Ninnoc’s godmothers, although her mother didn’t really approve. Ninnoc’s other godmother is a strange woman called Euny, who lives in a cottage in the wild areas outside of the protection of Ninnoc’s father. Ninnoc doesn’t like Euni when she meets her because she’s raggedy and unkempt, and for some reason, she insists on calling Ninnoc by the name “Juniper.” Ninnoc’s mother says that Euny is a wise woman and that she calls Ninnoc “Juniper” because she says that is her true name. Both of Ninnoc’s parents trust Euny because she has special abilities. Ninnoc’s mother explains that there are different kinds of power in the world. Some people have power like Ninnoc’s father does, with armies of knights and political authority, but Euny has a different kind of power.

Ninnoc isn’t sure what kind of power that is, but she realizes that this is something that she wants to understand it. As a young princess, she is accustomed to be around power and has the sense that she wants to grow into a position of power, expecting that she will probably be queen one day, but at the same time, she realizes that she isn’t a warrior like her father and his knights. Euny’s kind of power might be the kind of power that Ninnoc will one day need. Still, when Ninnoc’s father tells her that she will have to go live with Euny for a year and a day and study with her, Ninnoc doesn’t really want to go. She doesn’t want to be away from her parents, her cousin, and her friends at her father’s castle, and she doesn’t really like Euny. However, the more Ninnoc begins to sense her own growing powers and to become concerned about what powers her aunt might have, the more she realizes that she needs whatever knowledge Euny has to offer her.

When Ninnoc decides that it’s time to go to Euny for training, she is surprised and a little hurt that Euni doesn’t seem too happy to receive her. Euny explains to her that the power she has is that of a Doran, someone who is very in touch with the natural world and the rhythms of life, but she doesn’t explain too much about what that means. In fact, Euny’s lack of explanations and kind treatment almost cause Ninnoc to give up on the idea of training with Euny entirely.

Euny’s small cottage in the countryside is uncomfortable. It’s often cold, and Euny doesn’t feed her much, telling her that she needs to learn what it’s like for people who are born without privilege. Ninnoc tries to bear it as long as she can, but it seems like Euny uses her more as a servant than anything else and doesn’t really explain anything to her. Euny takes her to gather herbs and plants, but she doesn’t initially explain what they are or what they’re for. Euni questions Ninnoc about her observations of the natural world, and Ninnoc’s observations of the world increase, but somehow, Euny never seems satisfied with her improvement. It seems that Ninnoc has been left to endure this treatment and dig out what training she can, but Ninnoc hardly knows just what it is that she’s even supposed to be learning.

Things change for the better then Euny takes Ninnoc with her to visit another Doran friend, Angharad, and her apprentice. Angharad and her apprentice live simply but far more comfortably than Euny and Ninnoc. Angharad has at least provided her apprentice, another girl about Ninnoc’s age, with a proper bed to sleep in, a warm house, and adequate food, which Euny has not. Ninnoc can tell that Euny is uncomfortable at how much Ninnoc prefers Angharad, and she is embarrassed when Angharad insists that she leave Ninnoc with her for the winter. It’s only then that Euny awkwardly admits to Ninnoc that she really does care about her, even though she’s never said so before.

During that winter, Ninnoc comes to some important understandings of herself and what the path of a Doran can be like through her time with Angharad and her apprentice. However, Angharad says that Euny still has some important lessons to teach her. When Ninnoc complains about Euni’s lack of teaching, Angharad encourages Ninnoc to pay attend to Euny and dig out the lessons for herself. Euny has had a hard life, since she was orphaned and homeless at a young age, and she isn’t great at explaining herself or showing her emotions, but Angharad says that she’s still a powerful Doran and that Ninnoc can learn a lot from her. By the time Ninnoc is ready to return to Euny, she has come to understand more about Euny and is more sure of her path as a Doran, and Euny, for her part, comes to realize that the way she was treating her apprentice wasn’t helpful to her. Euny helps Ninnoc to increase her learning of the healing arts, saying that this will be important to her path in life. Ninnoc begins to embrace her true identity as Juniper the Doran.

When the year and a day are over, Ninnoc returns to her parents, but she is growing up and must now make some important decisions about the course her life will take and how to use her abilities. When she first returns home, she can tell that things have been bad while she was away. The harvest has failed, which is something her father says has happened before, but it seems especially bad. In spite of that, her aunt has decided to remarry and insists on a big wedding feast. Ninnoc is suspicious of her aunt and, because of her training, comes to suspect that Meroot used an evil curse to ruin the harvest.

Having learned things about power and how people crave it or grasp it, Ninnoc begins to understand her aunt in ways she didn’t before. Meroot has always been bitter because, as a princess, she was deprived of her chance to rule when her younger brother, Ninnoc’s father, was born. For a time, she harbored a hope that Ninnoc’s father might not have children, but because he married and had Ninnoc, Meroot found her chances of ever having the throne dwindling. In some ways, Ninnoc shares the feeling that it isn’t fair for a girl to be deprived of her place in succession just because she has a brother or that the “manly” powers of fighting and war are prized more for rules than the powers of wisdom and healing. Yet, she can’t allow Meroot to harm others because of that.

Using her own Doran healing abilities, Ninnoc is able to help undo Meroot’s curse. The land becomes prosperous again, but Ninnoc’s own destiny and desire for power and position are tested when she learns that her mother is expecting another baby and that she thinks it will be a boy. Ninnoc feels some of the jealousy Meroot has always felt at being deprived of power and position, displaced by a younger brother. With Euny’s help, Ninnoc/Juniper begins to see another destiny for herself besides the one she always assumed she would have as her father’s heir, but she must overcome her feelings to protect her mother and younger brother and find her real place in the world as Juniper the Doran.

This book is a prequel to the book Wise Child, written after it but showing Wise Child’s mentor Juniper and her own coming-of-age story. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I remember reading this book as a teenager, after I read Wise Child, and I liked it then, although I have some different perspectives now on the story and some of the characters. I think it’s important to note that the “Dorans” in the story are sort of pseudo-proto-Wiccans, but they’re not really historically accurate. “Doran” isn’t an historical term for a witch or wise woman; it’s just invented for this particular fantasy series.

I had forgotten how much Euny neglected and deprived Juniper during her time as her student. I remember that Juniper was initially a little spoiled from being raised as a princess, but as Angharad realizes, Euny’s lessons in living as an ordinary person and getting in touch with nature go beyond what is actually good for Juniper, keeping her underfed and inadequately housed. That level of neglect isn’t really necessary for Juniper’s path as a Doran, as her time with Angharad and her apprentice make her realize. The true is that Euny is a bad cook and housekeeper and settles for just barely scraping by in her life. Even though Juniper is initially inexperienced with cooking and cleaning, she soon realizes that she’s better at it than Euny is, partly because Euny hardly tries. Angharad says that Euny is a good teacher, but objectively, she really isn’t. What she’s actually good at is getting in touch with the powers of the natural world and healing, but she’s initially bad at explaining things, and her treatment of Juniper is actually preventing her from learning.

The book doesn’t explicitly say this, but Euny seems jealous of Juniper at first for her privileged early life. No matter what Juniper does, she seems determined to mock and humiliate Juniper as the privileged princess, and she is gleeful when Juniper realizes that she’s treating her less as a student and more as a servant because she relishes the role reversal. Euny has lived a life of deprivation, and I think some part of her is still bitter about it. Juniper knows that her father has offered Euny a nice place to live in the grounds of his castle and other gifts that she has refused. She lives the way she does because she has chosen this lifestyle. Juniper’s time with Angharad causes Euny to reconsider her treatment of Juniper and what she’s really been teaching her, so when she comes to reclaim Juniper from Angharad, things change between then. It’s partly due to Juniper’s growing understanding of the path she’s choosing in life, but I think it’s also due to Euny coming to understand the real relationship between herself and Juniper and to reconcile her own feelings. I think it’s important to consider that angle of things because it helps lay the groundwork for Juniper’s later struggle with her own emotions regarding her place in the world.

The society the characters live in relies heavily on social status or power of one kind or another. Juniper’s parents love her, but when her little brother is born, Juniper immediately knows that she is out of the line of succession for her father’s position. It hurts her, and Juniper has to acknowledge and come to terms with that hurt. It’s partly the hurt of being replaced and partly the loss of power, something which matters so much in their society. However, Juniper doesn’t want to become like her aunt, twisted by greed for the one kind of power and authority she can’t have and failing to use the powers she does have in the right way. Meroot uses her powers to manipulate and hurt others, while Juniper genuinely wants to heal and protect others. While it does hurt that others no longer see her as her father’s heir and that she won’t have that type of power, as she once thought she might, Juniper comes to appreciate the power that she does have and that she can use it to create a new destiny for herself.

I still hate the part in the story where Euny makes Juniper kill the pig for food. Like Juniper, I know, intellectually, that the pig is an important food source and that’s what it’s being raised for, but it’s still a bloody business, and I hated reading about it. When Euny neglects Juniper emotionally, Juniper bonds with the pig as one of the few animals Euny keeps, making killing him even harder for her, and it just seems like a cruel manipulation from Euny to make her do it.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Wise Child

Wise Child by Monica Furlong, 1987.

Juniper is an unusual woman in the community where she lives. Wise Child knows that she originally came from Cornwall, and now, she lives alone and unmarried. People also know that she practices magic and doesn’t go to church. Yet, although people are a little suspicious about her for that, they still call on her for help when someone is very ill because she is an excellent healer and can frequently help when others can’t.

Wise Child (a nickname given to her by her family) finds herself alone at the age of nine. Her mother, Maeve, had left her with her grandmother years before and her father, Finbar, is a sailor who is often away. While her father is away, Wise Child’s grandmother dies, and the community has to decide where Wise Child will live until her father returns. She wants to live with her aunt, but her aunt and uncle are poor and already have trouble providing food for their children. After church one day, the village priest asks the villagers if anyone else is willing to give Wise Child a home. Few people are willing to take on an extra responsibility and an extra mouth to feed. At first, the only people who are interested in taking Wise Child are people who want to use her as a little servant or extra worker. Wise Child fears going to live with them because she knows they use their own children as hard workers, feeding them little and beating them for discipline. Then, Juniper speaks up and says that she would like to have Wise Child.

The priest is reluctant to let Juniper take Wise Child, knowing that she isn’t a Christian. Juniper suggests letting Wise Child decide where she wants to live, but Wise Child isn’t sure what to answer. She fears the other families and how they would treat her. Juniper has been kind to her in the past, but Wise Child also fears her because of the stories people tell about her. However, Wise Child’s aunt sees that Juniper would take better care of her than the other families, so she lies and says that her father had previously said that, if anything happened to his mother, he would like Juniper to take care of Wise Child. Nobody contradicts this, so Juniper takes custody of Wise Child.

Wise Child is nervous when she goes to live in Juniper’s house, fearing that she will cast spells on her or that she has dead bodies hidden in her cupboards, like her cousins claimed. When Juniper asks her what’s worrying her, Wise Child surprises herself by admitting that she’s heard all of these stories about her and that she’s afraid. To her surprise, Juniper isn’t angry at her or at the people who have told Wise Child these stories. Instead, she says that she thinks Wise Child is brave for coming to her house even while fearing all of these things, and she reassures her that these stories aren’t true. As Wise Child becomes familiar with her house and with her, she will see that she and her house aren’t as scary as the stories say.

Wise Child finds that this is true. Juniper’s cupboards are full of very ordinary things, and the broom that people say Juniper uses for flying is just an ordinary broom. Juniper also doesn’t beat Wise Child, even when she does things wrong. Juniper promises that she will never beat her.

Wise Child finds that she likes living with Juniper. She had always wanted to go to school, like some of the other children, and Juniper teaches her many things. She teaches her some practical household skills, and she also begins teaching her about herbs and medicines. Juniper also promises to teach Wise Child Latin, although girls in their area don’t usually learn Latin because they’re mostly expected to be wives and mothers and to learn to take care of households. However, Juniper says that all truly learned people learn Latin. When her cousin, Coleman, comes to visit to see if she’s all right with Juniper, Wise Child assures him that she’s doing fine.

Juniper does have secrets, though. Wise Child isn’t sure what Juniper keeps in the attic of her house or what she does there. She begins learning Juniper’s secrets when Juniper gets a visit from an older woman called Yuni, who insists that Wise Child undergo a bizarre ritual. Yuni and Juniper smear some kind of smelly ointment on Wise Child’s skin that gives her a vision of flying on Juniper’s broomstick!

The next day, Wise Child questions Juniper about this ritual and whether the things she saw in her vision really happened. Juniper explains that she and Yuni are both magic-users. Some people might call them witches, but they refer to themselves as “Doran”, based on the word for “door” or a way into something. It has to do with people who see into things in ways that other people don’t. Dorans “live in the rhythm” of life, nature, and the changing seasons. Wise Child’s vision means that she has the ability to use magic and become a Doran as well.

As Wise Child begins to understand Juniper’s kind of magic, it awakens memories of her mother in her mind. Wise’s Child’s mother used to beat her and eventually abandoned her, leaving Wise Child with her grandmother while she ran away with another man. Wise Child feels hurt that her mother abandoned her instead of taking her along, wherever she went. However, she also begins to remember things her mother had and things she used to do that seemed strange. Wise Child asks Juniper if her mother was also a Doran, but she says no. Maeve practices magic, but it’s a very different kind of magic.

Wise Child comes to understand what Juniper means when Maeve returns and uses her magic to persuade Wise Child to come live with her for a while. She promises Wise Child a life of ease and luxury with no difficult or boring lessons, but when Wise Child sees what Maeve does and how she takes advantage of other people, she comes to appreciate Juniper’s way of life and lessons more. Maeve has even taken advantage of and hurt Wise Child and her father.

Gradually, Wise Child begins to learn the secrets of her own family’s past, the long rivalry between Juniper and Maeve, and other secrets about the land they live in, the things people who have lived there believed, and the things people have done for power and to control other people or the forces of nature. Wise Child feels conflicted between her beliefs in Christianity and the new knowledge that she’s been gaining about the Dorans. She doesn’t want to have to choose between them, although Juniper says that there’s no need. Juniper says that Christianity and the beliefs of the Dorans don’t really conflict with each other, and she also believes in Jesus. However, she admits that not everybody sees it that way. The village priest in particular is suspicious of Juniper and thinks that Juniper has corrupted Wise Child.

During a particularly bad winter, the priest blames Juniper for bringing on the famine and sickness. He brings in an inquisitor to question Wise Child and Juniper, and Wise Child fears what he and the people of the village will do to them. Will they find a way to escape, and if so, where will they go where they can be safe?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. It is the first book in a series about the Dorans, although the second book, Juniper, is a prequel to this one, and it focuses on Juniper’s early life.

My Reaction

I remember reading this book in my early teens, but there were many things about the lore it draws on that I didn’t understand back then. For me, it was just an interesting fantasy book. The story draws on witchcraft lore, but it’s not entirely historically accurate. To begin with, the term “doran” to describe witches or magic users is unique to this book and its series. It’s not an historical term.

The time period of the story is never explicitly defined, although it’s set in a small village in Scotland. I think, when I was younger, I took it to be sort of Medieval, and I think that’s probably what the author intended, but if so, there are various anachronisms for the Middle Ages. For example, Wise Child describes Juniper as giving her a kind of tea, but tea didn’t arrive in the British Isles until the 1600s and didn’t really become popular until the 1700s, so Wise Child shouldn’t have had that concept. Because the story’s time period isn’t really defined, I considered that the story could be as late as the 17th or 18th centuries, except that the village is clearly Catholic, with a priest and a monk serving as the inquisitor at the end of the story. There are no mentions of Protestants, and there should be if the story was set in the 16th or 17th century.

To be fair, Medieval people did make hot tea-like drinks of herbs or grains infused with water, but I don’t think they referred to these drinks as being “tea” because they weren’t familiar with the concept of “tea” then. In modern times, we refer to “tea” to mean a variety of infused drinks, but “tea” itself is a specific plant, the one used for black teas and green teas. Herbal teas don’t contain this plant, so they’re technically tea-like, not actually “tea.” I know it’s a technicality, but it’s the kind of thing I notice now that went past me when I was younger. When Medieval people made infused drinks, they didn’t have the tea plant in them, and they called them “waters”, not “teas”, like barley water or sage water.

Returning to the issue of whether or not this is pre-Reformation times or not, while the story seems to be set in pre-Reformation times, the type of witchcraft trial depicted at the end of the story is more in keeping with Reformation and post-Reformation Scotland than Medieval Scotland. The Witchcraft Act of 1563 made witchcraft illegal and led to a period of witchcraft trials that lasted until 1736. This is really the period of intense persecution of supposed witches, not the Middle Ages. Prior to the Witchcraft Act, it was more common for people to skeptically dismiss “witches” as being merely superstitious, delusional, or frauds rather than staging witch hunts and witch trials.

The type of witchcraft lore that the story uses is also somewhat anachronistic based largely around Wiccan lore and feminist sensibilities that had their basis in the 20th century rather than the type of herbal remedy healing that would have been found in the Middle Ages. (This documentary of the life of Gerald Gardner, the founder of Wicca, is fascinating and explains some of the background lore.) Juniper has a sense that there’s a connection between psychology and emotional health and physical health that’s more modern than Medieval, and her notions of what to teach Wise Child wouldn’t have just been unusual as concepts to teach a girl vs. a boy but also generally unusual for anyone of their time and location, a small village where people primarily make their living in farming.

She is correct that, to be truly considered a learned person in the Middle Ages, Latin would be expected, but this is the reason why truly literate people were considered so rare during that time. It wasn’t that nobody knew how to read during this period, but books were highly uncommon, being expensively and painstakingly produced by hand. More people could read and write in a vernacular way during the Middle Ages (spelling also not standardized during this period) than most people suppose, using basic writing for utilitarian purposes like keeping business accounts or sending occasional personal messages, but only clerical scholars and those who trained with them knew Latin. What I’m saying is that what Juniper teaches Wise Child wouldn’t have been shocking in Medieval Scotland for being inappropriate for girls and ruining them for being wives and mothers, as portrayed in the story, so much as it should have been shocking as a thing that a woman who lives as a simple folk healer in a small farming community shouldn’t have known in the first place to teach anybody. The prequel book, Juniper, explains that there’s far more to Juniper’s past than most of the characters in this book know and that she was far better educated than most people of her time because she came from a royal family.

The part about the psychedelic ointment that produces the illusion of flying is based on witchcraft lore, and there is a scene in the book that involves the sacrifice of a willing deer that is eaten after the ritual is based around concepts of pre-Christian rituals in the British Isles. Most of the details we have of pre-Christians rituals in the British Isles comes from Roman writings, and details are sometimes questioned. I had forgotten about that part of the story since I read the book the first time, and I didn’t like it the second time around. Even if the animal seemed willing to be sacrificed and was eaten afterward, making it a public meal and not just a wasteful sacrifice, it was still a disturbing scene.

Posted on by TracyC

The Lancaster Witch

The Lancaster Witch cover

The Lancaster Witch by Carol H. Behrman, 1993.

Thirteen-year-old Maddie Stoner is startled when her parents suddenly tell her that she has an English cousin named Clive who is going to be arriving for a two-week visit on Saturday. Maddie has never even heard of Clive before and wants to know who he is and what’s behind his sudden visit. Her parents explain that Clive is more like a second or third cousin, the son of her mother’s cousin, who moved to England years ago and married a British man. Her mother’s cousin has only occasionally kept in touch since her marriage, but her son, Clive is just a little less than a year older than Maddie and wants to visit the US. His mother has asked Maddie’s mother if she’s willing to have him at their home in New Jersey this summer, and her mother said yes.

Maddie gets the feeling like there’s something more behind this mysterious cousin’s visit than her parents are admitting, but they dodge her questions on the subject. When she tells her friend, Chloe, about her cousin, Chloe theorizes that maybe Clive is some kind of juvenile delinquent or is otherwise in trouble or into something his parents don’t approve of, so they want to send him overseas to get him away from his problems. (Chloe says that she read somewhere that people in England use the term “teddy boy” to describe boys involved in gangs. I looked it up, and it seems to be an older term from the 1950s and 1960s. It seems more associated with the aesthetic of certain types of rock and roll fans, although there were gangs associated with it as well. It’s just kind of an old concept for a 1990s book.)

When Maddie and her parents go to meet Clive at the airport, Maddie sees a creepy woman in black with a very pale face following Clive, her hand on his shoulder. Then, a traveler hurrying past accidentally bumps into Maddie with his suitcase and knocks her down. When she gets up and looks around, the woman is gone. She asks Clive who the woman was and where she went, and he says that there’s nobody with him. Maddie’s parents think she was just mistaken, that she just saw another traveler who happened to be near Clive at the time. Maddie is sure that she wasn’t mistaken, but Clive refuses to acknowledge that the woman in black was with him and her parents don’t want her to keep talking about it.

As Maddie and Clive start getting to know each other, Maddie decides that she likes Clive. Neither of them has any siblings. Clive and his parents live in a resort town called Morecambe outside of Lancaster in northern England. When Maddie asks Clive what made him want to visit the US, he’s a little evasive, just saying that his mother thought it would be good for him to get away for a while, making Maddie more suspicious that there’s something about Clive that no one wants to tell her. However, they discover that they have similar tastes in music, and when Maddie invites him to come to the community pool with her and her friends, Clive eagerly accepts, saying that he likes to swim.

At the pool, something happens that convinces Maddie that something truly sinister is happening. Clive and her friends all go swimming while Maddie takes some time to sun herself. Maddie is dozing in a lounge chair when someone starts yelling that someone is drowning! Clive is the one who almost drowns, but fortunately, he is rescued in time by the lifeguard. When he’s pulled out of the water, he tells Maddie that “she” pushed him into the water and made him hit his head and that “she” almost killed him. When Maddie looks around to see who “she” is, she sees the woman in black leaving the pool area. However, when the lifeguard starts asking Clive questions, he changes his story, saying that he just made a clumsy dive and hit his own head. Maddie later confronts him about what he told her, saying that she saw the woman in black, but Clive just gets upset and denies it all.

Maddie talks to her mother, and her mother confirms that Clive’s mother said that he’s been having a few problems lately that he needs to get away from. Clive’s mother was vague about what kind of problems Clive has been having, and Maddie’s mother assumes that Clive’s problems are just typical kid problems. She discourages Maddie from talking it about with Clive because she wants his visit to be pleasant and doesn’t want him to be upset.

Still, Maddie suspects that something much more serious is happening with Clive. Unable to shake the feeling that something bad is happening and that Clive is in real trouble, she snoops in his belongings, finding a letter that he started writing to his parents, saying that “it” followed him to the US. Clive also has books about ghosts and has written some notes about ghosts. Maddie wonders if Clive could be crazy, but she saw the woman in black herself. Clive’s panicked notes about ghosts might not be the imaginings of an unbalanced person but the reasonable fears of a person experiencing something truly unearthly.

Eventually, Maddie gets Clive to admit that the woman in black exists, but he refuses to tell her more about it until she promises that she won’t tell anyone else. Maddie promises, and Clive tells her that it’s the Lancaster Witch. In the 1600s, a group of women were executed for witchcraft in Lancaster, England. One of them, a woman named Elizabeth Device, was supposedly the head of a family of witches, and she cursed the judge in the trial and his descendants. Clive is one of those descendants. He’s been aware of her presence, following him around for about a year, and that was why he wanted to leave England, hoping to get away from her. His parents don’t seem to see her, so he hasn’t been sure whether she was real or just a ghost in his imagination. There have been stories about people in his family being haunted, but his father thinks that’s just superstition. Even though Maddie assures Clive that she’s seen the Lancashire witch, too, and that he isn’t imagining things, Clive says he can’t be sure. Maybe his imagination is now influencing her imagination.

For a while Maddie is persuaded that maybe the woman in black is all their imagination, and she tries to distract Clive from thinking about it. However, everywhere they go and everything they do, she always seems to be lurking around them, causing bad things to happen. She shatters a mirror in Maddie’s room at night and shoves Clive down the stairs. When Clive goes out for a bike ride with Maddie’s friend Tommy on a day when Maddie isn’t feeling well, he mysteriously disappears. Everyone assumes that he just got separated from Tommy and got lost because it’s an unfamiliar town for him, but Maddie is sure that it’s the ghost of Elizabeth Device and her curse!

As they search for Clive, Maddie and Tommy have to confront some truly dangerous things, both conventional and supernatural. There is a real ghost in the story, but there is also a more conventional form of danger. Dealing with the physical danger provides a solution for ridding Clive and his family from the curse of the Lancaster witch forever.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I remember reading this book when I was about 10 or 11 years old. A friend of mine had a copy, and I borrowed it from her. I remembered that I really liked it, but I had forgotten many of the details over the years. Now that I’m an adult, I understand more about the history behind the events in the story than I did as a kid. As a kid, I knew about witch trials, so I understood the basic concept behind the witch’s ghost, but I now know much more about the specific witch trial the story references.

There is a note in the back of the book about the historical basis for the story. In 1612, ten women were hanged for witchcraft in Lancashire, England, in front of Lancaster Castle, including Elizabeth Device. There have been many non-fiction books written about this case, and there are video documentaries on YouTube about the Lancashire witches, also known as the Pendle witches or Pendle Hill witches. One of the more shocking elements of that witch trial was that Elizabeth Device’s own nine-year-old daughter, Jennet, testified against her.

In the story, when Clive and Maddie are discussing the witches and witchcraft trials, they compare the Lancashire witch trials to the Salem witch trials, although Clive is wrong about the Salem witches being burned to death. It’s sloppy scholarship on the part of the author. The notion of witches always being burned is prevalent in popular culture, and it makes for dramatic scenes in movies, but that’s not how it went in real life, at least not in Colonial American. Nobody was burned in Salem because it was a British colony, and the British punishment for witchcraft was hanging, like in the Lancashire trials. Most of the Salem “witches” were hanged, and one person was pressed to death. It’s been a pet peeve of mine to point that out since I did some reports about witchcraft trials in college. It’s one of the first things people get wrong about Salem when they haven’t really researched the events there.

Maddie and Clive discuss some of the motives people had for accusing others of witchcraft, which could vary from suspicion that a neighbor was causing misfortunes to outright spite against someone they hated or envied for other reasons. Clive says that some of the people accused and executed for witchcraft believed that they were actually casting spells themselves. Whether they actually could do magic or if they were actually just following old superstitions is debatable, and Clive acknowledges that. Of course, since this is a ghost story with a witch’s ghost, the presumption here is that the witch had some kind of real power.

The story is suspenseful, but it has a good ending. Most people don’t know that the ghost is real, and they think that the danger Clive is in comes from another source. There is a conventional source of danger in the form of some criminal activity. Dealing with that situation helps to resolve the matter of the witch’s ghost because the ghost decides that Clive has repaid her family for what happened during the witch trial.

In the story, Maddie and her friends enjoy talking with Clive about differences between American and British teenagers, and they point out the differences in the ways each of them talk. Maddie also wonders if British kids play Monopoly, and the book says that she and her friend Tommy teach Clive how to play. However, I know that Britain has had its own versions of the game of Monopoly for decades, long before this story was written, so Clive should have at least known the premise of the game, even if he didn’t usually play.