Hansel and Gretel


10


Bethan Woollvin, Two Hoots, 978-1509842698, £11.99 hbk


Woollvin’s picture-books are invariably subversive, and this one is no exception, featuring Willow, an (almost) endlessly patient witch who struggles to contain the depredations of two greedy and ill- mannered children. Because Willow is a good witch, she remains calm as


Hansel and Gretel eat her house and damage her possessions – until she can maintain her composure no longer. The dismayed faces of the two children – turned, at last, into cookies for their crimes – and the killer last line (“Because Willow was not always a good witch”) play delectably with the idea of what it might take to push even the best of witches into using their powers for evil.


The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe


C.S. Lewis, HarperCollins Children’s Books, 978-0007323128, £5.99 pbk


The White Witch is an outright supervillain, a ‘wicked tyrant’ who keeps an entire magical realm perpetually bound in ice, and murders its true ruler. Her fatal charm and formidable gift for reading character, playing on Edmund’s isolation and jealousy to tempt him into betraying his siblings, give the book much of its unforgettable frigid peril; without


the paranoid fear she imparts (‘Even some of the trees are on Her side”’), the idea of a fantasy land at the back of a wardrobe would be nothing more than a charming whimsy. (She has also caused countless children to believe Turkish Delight more delicious than it actually is, and subsequently to be disappointed.)


Witch Child


Celia Rees, Bloomsbury, 978- 1408800263, £7.99 pbk


When Mary Newbury’s grandmother is hanged as a witch, she narrowly avoids the same fate, escaping to the New World only to find the same dangerous suspicions rising around her. Is a woman with the power to heal doomed to be forever persecuted? In this compelling story, told through a seventeenth- century diary discovered in the present day, Rees examines misogyny, mistrust, and the ways in which communities police their women’s knowledge, bodies and freedom.


The Changeover


Margaret Mahy, Orion Children’s Books, 978-1510105058, £7.99 pbk


This terrifying, romantic coming-of-age story, set in suburban New Zealand, features Laura, a teenage girl contending with an ancient, devouring force that seeks to drain her little brother’s life. To save Jacko, Laura must allow her own nature to be changed – from ‘sensitive’ to full-blown witch – by the mysterious Carlisle women, and their still more mysterious son Sorry, by whom Laura has been fascinated for months. The Changeover won the Carnegie Medal


in 1984, but its complex, thrilling themes of power, identity and choice are still deeply resonant today.


The Wee Free Men


Terry Pratchett, illus Laura Ellen Anderson, Corgi Children’s Books, 978-0552576307, £7.99 pbk


The dauntless shepherd-witch Tiffany Aching is one of the late Terry Pratchett’s sparkiest and most satisfying characters, and the Discworld stories in which she stars are the perfect entry point to his wider oeuvre for young fantasy lovers. During Tiffany’s first outing she discovers, aged 9, that her ability to see things differently may mean she is her people’s witch; makes an alliance with the


boisterous Nac Mac Feegle, small but unstoppable blue Scots pictsies; and saves her little brother from the monstrous Queen of the Fairies. Gutsy, clear-sighted, sometimes pig-headed, Tiffany is a courageous, intelligent and commonsensical witch, and a compelling heroine.


The Girl Who Drank the Moon


Kelly Barnhill, Piccadilly Press, 978-1848126473, £6.99 pbk


The people of the Protectorate leave a baby as yearly tribute for the forest witch, a sacrifice which they hope will preserve them from her depredations. But Xan the witch, a kindly creature who lives with a poetic swamp monster and a tiny dragon, merely takes the babies to adoptive families on the other side of the forest, feeding them starlight on the way. When she inadvertently nourishes one baby


with moonlight, though, she fills her up with magic; and this child, Luna, Xan decides to keep, locking her magic inside her until she is thirteen. But as Luna’s powers begin to emerge, a young man from the Protectorate sets out, determined to free his people by killing the witch…Barnhill’s gorgeous, poetic, humorous Newbery-winner focuses on perception distorted by fear, and on growing into and accepting one’s changing self.


Books for Keeps No.236 May 2019 7


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