Review - Little Witch Goes to School

Little Witch Goes to School (Little Witch #3)
by Deborah Hautzig
illustrated by Sylvie Wickstrom
Date: 1998
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 48
Format: e-book
Source: library

Little Witch wants to go to school just like her friends, but her mother thinks she should stay home and learn from her witchy aunts. Mother Witch finally agrees to let Little Witch go, but only if she promises to be very, very bad. It's a wild ride on a broomstick that kids won't soon forget! The third book in the popular Little Witch series, Little Witch Goes to School has all the mixed-up magic and quirky humor kids have come to love in the first two books.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

Wow. Things have changed since the late '90s. I don't know if a book like this would get published today. Aside from encouraging bad behaviour, the book also minimizes verbal abuse and makes fun of those with intellectual disabilities.

Little Witch is bored because she has nothing to do. Her mother wants her to hang out with her horrible aunts (who do things like throw eggs at the mailman), but when Little Witch isn't nasty enough for their liking, she gets sent back to her mother, who yells at her some more. So she's sent to do something with Cousin Dippy, who's "always doing something stupid" (in fact, she's trying to tape the leaves back onto the branches of a tree because she "doesn't understand about Fall"). Fed up with her family, Little Witch begs to go to school. Her mother relents, on the condition that she behave horribly and not make any friends. Well, of course Little Witch is a model pupil and makes a ton of friends, bringing them all back to her house after school. Her mother gets angry and tells Little Witch to get rid of them. So Little Witch uses a spell to zap them all home. Then her mother tells her she's proud of her for breaking her promise not to make any friends (because it's bad to break a promise... and it's good to be bad).

I just don't like the message here. Kids might think it's funny, but I don't like Cousin Dippy's disability being used for laughs (even her name is offensive) and the verbal abuse dished out by Mother Witch makes me cringe (yelling seems to be the only way she can communicate). While some of the pictures are cute (I especially like Little Witch's coffin-shaped lunchbox), they're not enough to enable me to overlook the more problematic aspects of the story.

For better tales of a little witch, try Patricia Coombs's Dorrie the Little Witch books.

Premise: 2/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 2/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 2/5

Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 2.17 out of 5