If ever there was an author who could capture the wonder of a child's imagination, mix it with the bizarre, and add some scary, to create stories that children adore, it was Roald Dahl. In the classic kids' book, The Witches, by Roald Dahl, he mixes all those elements into a story that will have youngsters looking for the signs.
What signs? The signs to recognize a witch, of course. The young boy in the story lives with his grandmother, who warns him to watch for several telltale signs.
The first sign is that witches will be wearing gloves, always.
"Surely not always," he says. "What about in the summer when it's hot?"
Yes, even in the summer, because witches do not have fingernails. They have curvy claws, like a cat, so they wear the gloves to hide them. But there are many women who wear gloves, who aren't witches, so that didn't help very much.
The second sign to watch for is baldness. A real witch is always bald. So of course, she would be easy to spot. That's why they all wear wigs.
Real witches also have telltale nostrils. They are extra large, for smelling out children.
If you look into a real witch's eyes, you will see, in the dot in the center, not black, like ordinary people. Instead, it will keep changing color. You will see fire and ice dancing. It will send shivers all over your skin.
They also have feet but no toes. The ends of their feet are squared off, but they smash them into normal-looking, pointy-toed shoes.
Finally, they have blue spit. So you could spot them easily if they spat. And of course, that means they never spit, so they can't get caught.
Armed with this knowledge, the boy thinks he has found an entire convention of witches when they go to a seaside hotel for a vacation. Things start to get very creepy when the witches catch him, and he is forever changed...into a mouse!
Then he must risk getting killed by the witches, the hotel staff, and of course, a cat, in order to get back to Grandma for help. But they do better than that. Together, he and Grandma hatch a plan to destroy every witch.
Kids love this book because of the magical terror involved. It's just real enough to be believable, and scary. The fact that this book has been made into a movie attests to its popularity.
If you like other magically strange and scary books, you will also enjoy this classic kids' book: Roahl Dahl's The Witches. And watch out for women who are scratching their heads with gloved hands!
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