Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund
Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund
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****The Witch's Walking Stickby Susan MeddaughReviewed December 17, 2006.
Walter Lorraine Books (Houghton Mifflin), 2005. 32 pages. Susan
Meddaugh’s books remind
me of William Steig’s—delightful, imaginative and satisfying stories
with
cheery but detailed cartoon-like illustrations. This book
opens with an old
witch and her magic walking stick. “Over
the years she had used it to make a thousand miserable wishes come
true.” It has just a little bit of magic
left. She particularly likes turning
creatures into
something worse—birds into bats and squirrels into goldfish (with no
fishbowl)
and things like that. One day a
cheerful little dog
passes her on the path. She raises her
stick to turn it into something—and he thinks she wants to play and
grabs it
from her. When she yells at him in fury,
he runs away, still with the stick in his mouth. Now we meet a
little orphan
named Margaret, forced to cook and clean and chop wood by her older and
much
bigger brother and sister. When Margaret
encounters the witch, the dog, and the walking stick, interesting
things begin
to happen. Let’s just say that the use
Margaret puts to the little bit of magic left in the witch’s walking
stick is
highly satisfying.
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