The Worst Witch Book Review

My daughter was VERY excited to get to the gold space on her behavior chart this week – because it meant an extra story. And that meant a Worst Witch book review for me to do as well!

She is truly the daughter of a librarian…

We read some of The Worst Witch together, which she has also been reading on her own before she nods off each night in bed. She utterly adores it.

So here is the KiddyCharts Review for it – we promised we would do children’s book reviews last week…and we always keep our promises here…

So what’s the story?

For those of you who haven’t heard about Jill Murphy’s wonderful tales of witching chaos; they are a bit of a light-hearted pre-cursor to the Harry Potter wizarding school stories.

The wonderfully scatty, Mildred Hubble (or Mildrit as Chatterbox insists on calling her), is a first year witch at Miss Cackle’s Academy for girls. And the book tells of her adventures in her first year there, with her loyal friend Maud.

Put it this way, Mildred is not a model pupil; if the spells go awry – then she’s behind it all.

Why do I think Chatterbox liked it?

The stories and the English in this book are simple. And for a six year-old, that’s key. She can relate well to the main character, and actually dresses up as her sometimes. She has also announced she is going into school as “Mildret” next year for World Book Day. Which is great, a witch I can do….I might struggle if she wants to be Elmer as she threatened this year…

The book also has wonderful touches of humour in it; but the funnies are easy, even for the littlest reader to understand; the class swot is turned into something rather un-pleasant for example. Younger children will love it because of this simplicity too.

And finally, it gives children the opportunity to imagine what life would be like if magic was an everyday part of our surroundings…and what little girl wouldn’t want to be able to turn her annoying little brother into a frog at will….?

Why did Chatterbox actually like it?

I asked Chatterbox why SHE liked it. This is after all, her review, she said:

“Mildred and her friends made me really happy because she is really funny. I really liked it when she fell off her broomstick.”

So the secret of great kid’s literature? Make sure someone falls over…

Overall Rating 8/10

And that’s only because Chatterbox found Miss Hardbroom, the form teacher for Mildred, a bit scarey.

In fact, she insisted on having me reading it to her in the mornings rather than the evenings so she didn’t go to sleep dreaming about her…!

So if you haven’t discovered these books yet – go check them out!

Have you read any of the Worst Witch stories, or do you remember them as a child? Your thoughts are more than welcome here.

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