Book review on 'The Witches' by Roald Dahl in 250 words.
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The Witches by Roald Dahl presents a dark take on the world of witchcraft and produces one of the most ghastly villains in children’s middle grade literature – The Grand High Witch.
‘Vee have ignition!’
We loved Roald Dahl at school and what better way to spark off our Halloween Week book reviews than with one of the Top 100 Children’s Books of All Time. The Witches by Roald Dahl, with haunting illustrations of The Grand High Witch by Quentin Blake, is a terrifying classic for young readers.
‘Grandmamma,’ I said, ‘when you were a little girl, did you ever meet a witch?’
‘Once,’ my grandmother said. ‘Only once.’
One of the greatest literary relationships between a child and his grandmother emerges from this classic. The friendly first-person narrative allows us to feel like we are the only reader privy to the story of an unnamed orphan raised by his Norwegian grandmother. Ciger-smoking Grandmamma with her missing thumb and wide body (filling every inch of her armchair) is a triumph. Discouraging her grandson from bathing (cue children cheering!), so the witches don’t detect his “stink-waves”, her cigar is sometimes “the only real thing about her”. Wise and smothered in grey lace, Grandmamma is portrayed as an “ancient queen on her throne”. These facts make it unsurprising that the boy loves her more than his own mother before her death.
‘This is not a fairy tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.’
With the grandson remaining nameless we are drawn to learn more about this retired “witchophile” with her secret past as Grandmamma teaches him everything she knows about witches. What fascinating details we learn, too, and just in time! When the boy comes into contact with a room full of witches, he needs to be prepared if he is to survive.
With the story moving at a pace, (one sentence moves us from Norway to England and a paragraph packs us off to school) this “witch-conscious little boy” and his Grandmamma become embroiled in a dark plot. Children are slowly disappearing without trace. Witches across the world, led by The Grand High Witch, plan to eradicate all children everywhere.
‘REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. They live in ordinary hoses and they work in ordinary jobs.’