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Date Posted: September 01, 12:32:am GMT-5
Author: ill try some
Subject: Book talk

Was there ever something that you wanted to be? Children’s books have that ability to shape your personality, just as you are beginning to find the brainpower to actually string a few sentences together, and so the stuff sticks. But not just anyone can write something for a child because it has to have energy, it has to have a plot which grabs their attention and keeps it.
So it is surprising that when Jill Murphy first wrote her Worst Witch series in 1975 it was rejected by publishers for being too boring. This is a series that, even for adults, has an enduring appeal, like a comforting hot water bottle, there for when life just gets too bad. The books are essentially adventure stories and like most children’s literature end happily with a cosy sense of contentment. Mildred Hubble is the charismatic witch who studies at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches and always attracts trouble. Gangly, freckled, accident prone, with long thin plaits and two best friends who have equally quaint names (Enid and Maud), the stories usually concern Mildred’s inability to follow school rules, no matter how hard she tries.
My own favourite is A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch, the second book in the series, where Millie is first turned into a frog, then placed under a hex of invisibility. Expelled from the fireworks display, finally she feels compelled to save a magician who lives as a toad at the bottom of the school pond. All this and she still has to contend with fellow student and "Miss Goody Two-Shoes" Ethel Hallow (you know the type, teachers pet but a real bitch underneath).
The exploits of Mildred are the usual things Significantly, Murphy manages to describe a life which may be entirely make-believe but is also grounded in reality. We all know the Twins at St.Clare’s scenario, that evocation of ’50s boarding school life which makes Enid Blyton's books so popular with younger readers, simply because the world she describes is so far removed from our usual experiences.
Murphy recreates this atmosphere but adds the surrealism of magic. But the important point is that the magic, while extraordinary to the reader, is a part of life for the girls at school. They sit in silence and do exams about invisibility potions; they train their cats to ride broomsticks; and do P.E in the freezing cold. You couldn't imagine ordinary humans in the books because the witches are so ordinary themselves.
Arguably The Worst Witch is a little girl’s book, most suitable for 8 year olds captivated by the thought of a close unit of friends within a predominantly unfriendly boarding school atmosphere. Add a cold, inhospitable castle perched on top of a mountain, surrounded by a thick forest to keep the humans out and you have an unknown realm to explore. Very different from co-educationals and home-time at 3:3O. More girls might read it than boys, but the series is universal.
The prose acts as if to shut out adult fears and keep the author in immediate contact with what it's like to be 12. Now the books are an extremely popular T.V show but I don't think anything quite captures Murphy's sharp wit or the brilliance of the black and white sketches, drawn by the author herself, which complement, mood for mood, everything she writes. Move over Sabrina The Teenage Witch. This is the definitive guide to witchcraft.

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