The Witch Family

The Witch Family (1960; this edition, 2000), by Eleanor Estes, Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone. 

Amy and Clarissa, two almost-seven-year-old girls who live in Washington, D. C., tell each other stories and draw pictures that seem to have a real existence of their own. Is it merely a make-believe on which the youngsters have an agreed-upon acceptance, or is there some kind of magical reality with which they have a special tie? It is the tension between these two points of view that give the book its special charm.

They particularly enjoy the subject of witches. This is how the story starts:

“One day, Old Witch, the head witch of all the witches, was banished. Amy, just an ordinary real girl, not a witch, said Old Witch would have to go away. So, Old Witch had to go. Instead of living in the briers and the brambles, the caves and the heaths, instead of flying around on her broomstick wherever she wanted, chanting runes, doing abracadabras, casting spells and hurly-burlies, this great-great (multiply the "great" by about one hundred and you have some idea of how old she was) old grandmother Old Witch had to go and live on the top of an awful, high, lonely, bare, bleak, and barren glass hill! And at first, she had to live in the witch house up on that hill all alone because at first there was no witch family — there was just herself.”

The girls, feeling that Old Witch was just too wicked to be free, nevertheless feel sorry for her loneliness and send her the Little Witch Girl to be her companion. Little Witch is Amy and Clarissa’s age, and not wicked at all, though just as ‘witchy’ as Old Witch; the girls then imagine the Weeny Witch, just a baby, but another companion, especially for Little Witch. They form the Witch Family, and under the influence of her new clan and the watchful eye of Malachi, a magical bee, Old Witch begins to mend her ways, hoping to be allowed out for Halloween.

The wonderful illustrations of Edward Ardizzone are the perfect companions to the text; I wish I could have got a copy with his original cover, but all his interior artwork is included.  

Though I had known of Estes’s books since I was in first grade, I only found out about this one in the last five years. What an interesting addition it would have made to the Witch Itch! But I suppose it was still a little too new for the McQueeney School library. This edition I have was probably reprinted because of the Harry Potter craze. It is never too late to read a good book, though you get different things from them at different times of your life, and I have it now.