On Duty: I Am a Witch's Cat by Harriet Muncaster

MY MOM IS A WITCH AND I AM HER SPECIAL WITCH'S CAT!

Our girl is observant, and all the evidence points to her conclusion: Mom is a witch!

There are bottles and vials of potions on the vanity in the bathroom that Mom forbids her to touch!

Mom stocks up on jars of green and red eyeballs and warty little green fingers!

She has an garden with strong-smelling herbs which she picks and dries in little bundles!

Her friends gather sometimes at night, sitting in a circle and cackling a lot!

She can make a cut finger or scraped knee stop hurting instantly!

Cauldrons simmer and steam on the stove! And she has a very nice broom!

The only thing a good witch like her mom needs is a familiar, a special companion animal to sit on her lap and help her in the garden.

It's a hard job but somebody has to do it! And our girl has a head-to-toe cat costume, complete with ears and tail, so she's all set to be the witch's cat, ready to go on duty or to hop on the broom at any time her mom says the magic words.

Harriet Muncaster's latest, I Am a Witch's Cat (Harper, 2014), features a fetching little witch's familiar, her darling daughter, ready for action on Halloween or any time at all. Muncaster's readers will giggle at the little girl's interpretation of her mom's beauty creams as potions and her jars of stuffed olives and gherkins as eyeballs and shrunken green fingers, and the author's charming multimedia artwork extends the simple text humorously by slyly and subtly revealing the true nature of Mom's supposed magic craft to sharp-eyed readers. Publishers Weekly gives this one a starred review, and Kirkus Reviews adds, "This heartwarming look at the close bond between mother and daughter stands out for its clever twist and stunningly detailed artwork."

Throwback Thursday--Before Martha Made the Big Time! The Witches' Supermarket by Susan Meddaugh

"I JUST LOVE HALLOWEEN!" SAID HELEN TO HER DOG MARTHA.

"I'M SORRY YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR COSTUME," HELEN SAID, "BUT WITCHES HAVE CATS, NOT DOGS.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT."

Before Martha the Talking Dog became a picture book heroine and a media star of PBS Kids' Martha Speaks cartoon series, before she had a retinue of supporting characters and dozens of spin-off books, she was just a dog.

Seriously. Before Martha acquired a taste for alphabet soup and acquired her famous non-stop verbiage, she was just a plump pooch, playing a supporting part in a charming little Halloween saga starring Helen, her owner, in a plot in which (horrors!) Martha even has to play the part of a .... CAT!

It's true.

It is Halloween, and Helen, dressed in a ragged black dress and tall peaked hat, sets out for an evening of trick-or-treat. To fit the occasion, her dog Martha is forced, under duress, to dress in a black cat costume, complete with pointy ears. Martha scares herself in the mirror when she sees her ignoble attire, but being a good dog, she plods, hangdog, along behind Helen down the street. A dumpy lady in a purple coat ahead of them drops a piece of paper, and Helen picks it up. It reads...

ONE FREE BROOM! OCTOBER 31 ONLY!

Trying to catch the lady and return her coupon, Helen (and Martha) follow the rumpled figure into a narrow alley and through a door.  The door is plastered with signs:

MEMBERS ONLY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE SORRY

NO DOGS ALLOWED

Should Helen go in? If we want a story she should.

Figuring Martha is technically a cat for the evening, Helen leads her into what appears to be an average supermarket. She plops Martha into a cart and hurries after the old lady. Only Martha seems to notice that there are black cats and crows everywhere and that the produce shelf displays poison mushrooms, hemlock, and premium apples with worms. Dashing past the cooler cases with styrofoam trays of eyes of newt and baby bats, Helen spots a purple-clad figure in the broom department, and just as she approaches her with the coupon, the lady straddles the broom and takes off for a trial run. Helen screams and Martha yelps with surprise.

The store manager bears down on them suspiciously, and Helen stammers that she is just, uh, looking for the dog food.

"DOG FOOD!" THE MANAGER SHRIEKS. "SHE'S NOT A WITCH!"

ZAM! Suddenly they are surrounded by black cats and witchy women. A flight of broomsticks is launched toward Helen and Martha. Martha holds the scary mob at bay with a persuasive GRRRRR!

HELEN SUDDENLY WANTS TO GO HOME!

Helen and Martha escape to the street, where they take cover in the dozens of little witches, cats, pumpkins and fortune-tellers out for treats, and we know it's going to be a while before Helen and Martha venture into another supermarket, in the brand-new edition of the Meddaugh's prequel to her hit Martha Speaks series, The Witches' Supermarket (8x8 with stickers) (Martha Speaks) (Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). Before her debut as talking dog, Martha was still a great dog, and though she now has her own daily show, a supporting cast of dozens of varied characters, and a media empire of artists and writers for her spinoff Easy Readers, before all those Martha Speaks books, she already had star quality, and her fans of all ages will enjoy knowing Martha before she became Big-Time Martha.

School Days Spell-ing Shootout: A Very Witchy Spelling Bee by George Shannon

Cordelia is a little witch who loves SPELLING--both the language arts kind and the magical kind--and for a witch, that means doing both at the same time!

EVEN WHEN SHE PLAYED, CORDELIA PLAYED BY MIXING HER SPELLING WITH SPELLS.

WITH THE ZAP OF AN O, HER CAT, C-A-T, TURNED INTO A COAT, C-O-A-T.

THEN BACK TO A CAT.

THE ZAP OF A K TURNED THE VERY SAME CAT INTO A T-A-C-K.

So when the Witches' Double Spelling Bee rolls around, Cordelia just knows she ready to take on two-hundred-and-three-year-old Beulah Divine, gunning for her fourteenth win.

"I'VE STUDIED. I'VE PRACTICED.
I'M READY TO WIN.

Both Cordelia and Beulah have lots of confidence to take to the competition, despite the challenging rules:

1. Pull a letter out of the bowl.

2. Choose something orange from the table and spell it.

3. Using the letter you picked, cast a spell that transforms it into something new.

4. Spell the new word.

This wizardly bee is rigorous, and one by one the other contestants go down, until only Cordelia and the venerable Beulah, dressed in intimidating orange, remain. Beulah shows no mercy as she draws a P and turns Cordelia's ears into P-E-A-R-S. Without missing a beat, Cordelia comes back strong when she draws a W and turns the ear of corn on the table into a C-R-0-W-N, which she clearly plans on wearing at the end of the contest.

Beulah bounces back by changing a chair into Cordelia's H-A-I-R. Cordelia's mother is incensed!

"SHE'S A JEALOUS OLD FIEND!" SHE SCREAMED.

The Bee is down to a spelling shootout. Cordelia draws an R, and a glance at the things left on the stage--a hankie, a bowl of slugs, and a sweater--tells Cordelia that she's got to come up with some creative spelling to win the final round.

I STUDIED.  I PRACTICED. I 'M READY TO WIN," CORDELIA SAID WITH A STARE INTO BEULAH'S SMALL EYES.

With her hair-chair at a jaunty angle, Cordelia brandishes her R, points a  finger at Beulah, and casts the winning spell:

BEULAH WAS NO LONGER A F-I-E-N-D.

She was a ...

Little listeners will likely intuit Cordelia's final spell and start giggling even before that last page turn, and even Beulah is surprised to find herself smiling and hugging her new-found F-R-I-E-N-D as Cordelia proudly takes her trophy. George Shannon's clever little conflict resolution tale, A Very Witchy Spelling Bee (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) features delightful page design that sets off Mark Fearing's deliciously juicy comic illustrations as the suspense rises.  This witch tale has something for everyone, with intriguing wordplay, a pitch for spelling prowess, and a premise that turns a bully into a friend through the magic of quick thinking. A good one for back-to-school, Halloween reading, or spelling bee time, everybody will cheer for the little witch with the right stuff to out-SPELL a fiend of a rival.

School Library Journal spells out the virtues of this book, saying, "... a downright fun language game. . . Classroom spelling bees will never be the same once young readers get their hands on this title."

Zap Flap! The Witchy Wories of Abbie Adams by Rhonda Hayter

Come to think of it, the day my brother tried to eat his first-grade teacher turned out to be the same day that my dad brought me home a very, very strange cat.

Abbie is used to the problems that go along with being a witch-in-training in a wizardly family. She finds it hard to remember to conceal her special abilities from her best friend Callie, and she only grumblingly puts up with her mom's insistence that she forgo magic and do her chores the hard way.

But when her first-grade brother Munch tries to morph into a wolf and chomp his teacher to keep out of timeout, Aggie has to zap off a quick timefreeze spell, persuade Munch to take his punishment calmly, and then throw in a tardy forgetting spell on everyone around to cover her tracks. A little too slow to return to class, her slipshod magic earns her a trip to the principal's office. Back home at last, the day is saved from total misery by her dad, who shows up from work with a tiny black kitten for her. After months of begging for a pet, Aggie is thrilled.

But the more she bonds with little Tom, the more she begins to wonder what kind of kitten he is. He seems actually to enjoy looking at her science textbook, and before long she realizes that the kitty can read--and quite well, knocking off scientific tomes as fast as she can check them out of the library for him. Then she finds him typing notes to her on her computer with his tiny paws. Suddenly Abbie gets it--Tom is really Thomas Edison, inventive genius, changed into a kitten at the age of 13. Although her mom and dad finally come up with a spell to return him to human form, they all realize that unless they can get Tom back to his own period in time to make all his world-altering inventions, history will be irretrievably changed.

Half in a trance from watching the pizzas in the microwave turn round and round as the cheese started to bubble, Tom murmured. "Um...I can't quite seem to recollect...'

"Technology," I answered.

"You know, Tom, if it weren't for a lot of the things you're going to invent, most of these things we use every day wouldn't even be around. Like if you hadn't invented a system to get electricity into people's houses, we sure wouldn't be microwaving pizzas right now. And if you hadn't thought up a way to record sound, we wouldn't be hearing that heavy metal Munch is blasting upstairs."

"Oh, Bother," said Tom, as he winced at the loud thumping of the bass. "P'raps I ought to rethink that one...once I finally think of it."

Despite her witchy worries, Abbie is the prime mover in this plot, and with the foiling of the bad-apple wizard behind the whole evil time-altering magic, the young witch manages to help solve their problem and make the world safe for microwaved pizza and heavy metal sound with wit and humor.

It's a candy-corn fiction confection with a kernel of time-travel suspense and a niblet of common sense and good will thrown in, and fans of the Disney sit-com The Wizards of Waverley Place will slip seamlessly right in to the dilemma of a young witch trying to make it in the muggle world. Aggie is a likable and lively character who isn't sparing with her endearing nonstop self narration, and The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams (Dial Books, 2010) is a welcome addition to the popular tales of good little witches muddling along in a muggle world.

The Worst Witch Saves the Day by Jill Murphy

Mildred Hubble, who has the reputation as the "worst witch in school" is back at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, planning to redeem her reputation as she enters third form. Mildred, armed with a Broomstick Proficiency Certificate, a lovely new flying broom from her mum, and a summer of mastering insect transformation spells, is determined that this year will be different.

But for Mildred, good intentions don't seem to help. As she spruces herself up for her first all-school assembly, the styling brush she borrows from her friend Maud gets hopelessly entangled in her waist-long hair. Of course, the spiteful Ethel Hallow takes the opportunity to free the appliance by whacking it off, hair and all, leaving Mildred with half a crewcut on one side of her head. Unabashed, Ethel compounds the damage by hacking off the rest of Millie's hair haphazardly, leaving her with a waifish look that only her empathetic friend Enid can find fashionable.

Ethel, all sugary and apologetic, convinces Mildred to let her whip up a regrowth spell to return her hair to its original state, but when she rubs it into her remaining hair at bedtime, Mildred awakens later with a runaway regrowth problem. The long coils of regrowing locks threaten to engulf her, and her timid cat Tabby ends up dangling out the window by one rapidly lengthening lock several floors above the ground. Miss Hardbroom declares it a super-bad-hair day, and performs a spell to stop the regrowth and trim Mildred's hair back to its normal length.

At least her hair is back to normal as the students head out to their first flying class with their strange new teacher Miss Granite, but Mildred's cat Tabby is almost too shaken to board the broom. When he falls onto the steep tile roof of the teacher's residential hall, Miss Granite snatches him in through her window and declares that she plans to keep him until Mildred shapes up her flying performance.

Despite the best advice of her friends, Mildred decides to sneak into Miss Granite's room to retrieve poor Tabby late at night. But when Miss Granite catches her inside, she reveals that she is the evil twin of Miss Cackle in disguise to execute a takeover of the Academy and locks Mildred in her dark closet. Lucky for Mildred, she's mastered those insect transformations, and quickly reciting a spell, she changes herself into an ant and slips out under the door to rouse her friends and find a way to save Miss Cackle's Academy before it is too late.

In The Worst Witch Saves the Day (Worst Witch), her latest in the Worst Witch series, Jill Murphy extends her kid-pleasing stories of a student witch who perseveres despite her ineptitude at all things witchy. It's an endearing combination of the wizard academy and the girls' boarding school story, with both loyal friends and a spiteful teacher's pet of a student witch who gives Mildred as many problems as does her natural-born clumsiness. Rounding out the colorful cast of characters are the kindly, wise headmistress, Miss Cackle, and a tough drill sergeant of a third form teacher, Mrs. Hardbroom. Mildred is a good-hearted, pigtailed youngster, a bit of a klutz, but plucky, resourceful, and always loyal to her school--if not to its every rule and convention. Murphy's old-fashioned and charming black and white ink illustrations add cozy humor to her easy-going text.

Other books in this British import series include The Worst Witch (Young Puffin Story Books), The Worst Witch at School (Worst Witch,) The Worst Witch in Trouble (Worst Witch), The Worst Witch Strikes Again: 2 (Young Puffin Books), Adventures of the Worst Witch, and A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch: 9 (Young Puffin Books).

Baggin' a Dragon: Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson

Award-winning rhymster Julia Donaldson charmingly reworks two old folktale motifs, the "always room for one more" strand and the "Brementown musicians" strand, to come up with an original witch story, Room on the Broom, that is a surefire treat for picture book listeners.

A dapper red-haired witch, decked out in a purple skirt, red shirt, and yellow polka-dotted hairbow swinging from her long braid, takes off into a windy twilight sky with her ginger-striped cat and cauldron aboard. When the witch's tall hat blows away, she makes an emergency landing to search for it. She fails, but a spotted dog soon bounds up with the hat and hitches a ride on the broom.

He dropped it politely,
then eagerly said,
(As the witch pulled the hat
firmly down on her head),
"I am a dog, as keen as can be,
Is there room on the broom
for a dog like me?"

With the dog joyfully on board, the clutzy witch proceeds to lose her hairbow and then her wand, which are found by a hitchhiking bird and frog who also take their seats on the broom.

As the loaded broom struggles over the mountains, it suddenly snaps in two, and the frog, bird, dog, cat, and cauldron tumble down into a bog while the witch flies on. As her broom fragment loses altitude, the witch is menaced by a opportunistic fire-breathing dragon who chases her until she goes to ground.

But as the hungry dragon gloats over his expected supper, the four animals rise out of a swampy ditch, draped in mucky mud, as a four-headed, winged and fearfully fierce monster:

It was tall, dark, and sticky,
and feathered and furred.
It had four frightful heads,
it had wings like a bird.
And its terrible voice,
when it started to speak,
Was a yowl and a growl
and a croak and a shriek.
It dripped and it squelched
as it strode from the ditch,
And it said to the dragon,
"Buzz off!--
THAT'S MY WITCH!"

With the dragon banished, the unflappable witch turns her attention to the broom situation. Into her cauldron go a lily, a con, a twig, and a bone from the four friends, and with a "Iggety, ziggety, zaggety, ZOOM!," the witch conjures up a much more commodious conveyance for her entourage.

"Yes," cried the witch,
and they all clambered on.
The witch tapped the broomstick and
whoosh! they were gone.

Alex Scheffler, who also teamed with Donaldson on their prize-winning The Gruffalo, provides witty illustrations of a cheery witch and her happy hitchhikers which keep the story moving along without a hitch. Pair this one with The Hallow-Wiener for a sure-fire Halloween treat.