The Witches book summary and review

 Check out my The Witches book summary and review that I created to help you understand the basics of this great book. The Witches is a British children's dark fantasy novel by British author Rold Dahl. The story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and depicts the experience of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country.

The witches are ruled by the extremely evil and powerful Grand High Witch, who comes to England to organize a plan to turn all her children into rats. The Witches was originally published in 1983 by Jonathan Cape of London, with illustrations by Quentin Blake, a former collaborator with Dahl. It is one of the best children's novels of all time, but has received mixed reviews.

 
The most common criticism against the novel was based on perceived misogyny. The book was adapted into an unadulterated audio text by Lynn Redgrave, a stage play and a two-part radio drama for the BBC, a 1990 film directed by Nicholas Rogge and starring Angelica Houston and Rowan Atkinson, a 2008 opera by Marcus Pos and Ole. . Paus, and a 2020 film directed by Robert Jemekis.

The Witches book summary :

The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed seven-year-old English boy who goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents were killed in a tragic car accident. The boy likes all the stories of his grandmother, but he is especially fascinated by the stories of real life witches who he says are terrifying female monsters who want to kill human children.

She tells him how to recognize them, and she's a retired witch hunter (she herself encounters a child with a witch who slipped away with one of her missing thumbs). According to the boy's grandmother, a real witch looks exactly like an ordinary woman, but there are ways to tell if she is a witch: real witches have nails instead of nails, which they hide behind gloves; Bald,

Which they hide by wearing wigs that often break into their rashes; There are square feet without toes, which they hide behind uncomfortable fine shoes; There are eyes with students changing colors; They have the blue saliva they use for ink and the large nostrils they use to sniff out babies; The smell of a witch, a baby fresh dog shit; The dirtier the baby, the less likely it is to smell.

As mentioned in the parents' will, the narrator and his grandmother returned to England, where he was born and raised in school, and where his inherited home is located. However, the grandmother warns the boy to be careful, since English witches are known to be the most terrifying in the world, notorious for turning children into hateful creatures so that suspicious adults kill them. He assures her that there are fewer witches in England than in Norway.

Grandmother revealed that witches have different customs in different countries and that witches in each country have close ties with each other but they are not allowed to communicate with witches in other countries. He also told her about the mysterious Grand High Witch all over the world, the terrible and evil leader of all the witches in the world, who go to their councils in every country every year.

Shortly after returning to England, while the boy was working on the roof of his tree house, he saw a strange woman in a black dress staring at him with a wonderful smile and quickly registered that she was a witch. When the witch gives him a snake to tempt him to come down, he climbs higher up the tree and stays there, not daring to go down until his grandmother comes looking for him.

This prompted the boy and his grandmother to be especially careful, and he carefully examined all the women to determine if they could be witches. When Grandma became ill with pneumonia, the doctor instructed her to cancel her planned vacation in Norway (she and her grandson planned to go there).

The doctor explained that pneumonia can be very dangerous if a person is 80 or older (he later revealed in a book that he is 86), and therefore, he cannot even take him to the hospital in his condition. Instead, when he recovered about two weeks later, they moved to a luxury hotel in Bournemouth on the south coast of England.

The boy is training his pet rat, William and Mary, to be comforted by his grandmother after he lost his parents, in the hotel ballroom when the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" shows up for their annual meeting.

When one of them reaches out to scratch his scalp with his hand under his hair, the boy realizes that this is the annual gathering of witches in England (all the other women are also wearing gloves), but he is stuck in the house. A young woman goes on stage and removes her entire face, which is a mask. The narrator realizes that this is none other than the Grand High Witch.

He expressed his displeasure at the failure of the English witches to eradicate enough children and thus demanded the elimination of many of them before the next meeting. He eliminates a witch who questions whether it would be possible to wipe out all children in Britain.

The Grand High Witch has unveiled its master plan: to buy all the magical sweet shops in England (printed with counterfeit money from a counterfeit money making machine) and provide free sweets and chocolates with one drop of his latest creation: "Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse-maker ",

A magic drug that turns the consumer into a mouse at a specific time determined by the drug manufacturer. The purpose of the children's teachers and parents is to kill the converted children unintentionally, thus making the witches do dirty work for them so that no one will ever find the witches because they do not know that it was their job.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the formula, Grand High Witch brings in a child named Bruno Jenkins, a wealthy and often greedy boy who is tempted at the convention hall with the promise of free chocolate. He reveals that he tricked Bruno into eating a chocolate bar that was equipped with formula the day before and turned off the "alarm" during the meeting. The drug is effective, transforming Bruno into a rat before the combined witches.

After a while, the witches detect the narrator's presence and corner him. The Grand High Witch then poured a whole bottle of Formula 86 into his throat, and the extra dose immediately turned him into a rat. However, the transformed child retains his mentality, personality, and even his voice - refusing to be lured into the rat-trap.

After tracking Bruno, the converted boy returns to his grandmother's hotel room and tells her what he has learned. He advises witches to turn the table over and slip the medicine into their evening meal. With some difficulty, he was able to get his hands on a bottle of medicine from the Grand High Witch's house.

After an attempt to bring Bruno back to his parents failed miserably (mainly because of his mother's fear of rats), Grandma took Bruno and the narrator to the dining hall. The narrator enters the kitchen, where he pours the medicine into the green pea soup made for the witch's dinner.

On the way back from the kitchen, a cook sees the narrator and cuts off part of his tail with a carving knife before he is able to return to his grandmother. Like the narrator, witches all turn into rats in a matter of minutes. The hotel staff and guests are all terrified and unknowingly kill the Grand High Witch and all the witches in England.

Back home, the boy and his grandmother then make plans to free the witches from the earth. On the telephone, his grandmother, disguised as the Norwegian police chief, discovered that the Grand High Witch was living in a castle in that country. They will travel to the Norwegian castle at Grand High Witch, and use drugs to turn his heir and successor's assistant into rats, then release the cats to destroy them.

 Using Grand High Witch money making machines and witch information from different countries, they will try to eradicate them everywhere. Grandma also reveals that, as a rat, the boy will probably live another nine years, but the boy doesn't mind, because he doesn't want to surpass his grandmother (he reveals that he too can only survive) nine more years, because He would hate someone else to take care of him.

The Witches book review :

This funny story begins with a breakdown of all the stories and information known by the little boy narrator. She tells the reader how to find a witch. Since they look like regular women, you need to keep a close eye on the symptoms, such as wearing gloves.

They are constantly scratching their scalp from wearing itchy wigs on their bald heads. Most of all, however, they will always behave as if they smell dog feces around children. For them, all babies smell like feces.

While the boy was staying with his grandmother in Norway for the summer, his mother and father were tragically killed. So his grandmother went back to England to raise him where he was born. Later, while building his treehouse, the boy first met a real witch.

 She goes to him and tries to seduce him with a treat. But he was smart and saw the signs. She recognized him as a witch and stayed in the tree until her grandmother came to pick her up. When summer came again, they planned to return to Norway. But when her grandmother contracted pneumonia, that was no longer possible.

So instead, they decided to stay in a hotel in the south of England after recovering. It was there that he met Grand High Witch. There was a whole conference of witches with a new formula for turning babies into rats. After capturing the boy and turning him into one, he works with his grandmother to get rid of the witches and thwart their plans.

I absolutely love this fantastic story. The fantasy world that it has created is so amazing, yet so real. A boy narrator is one with whom everyone can relate and feel his experience.

 I especially liked the boy's special relationship with his grandmother. It reminds me of my grandparents. Witchcraft is a must read for all children. This is a perfect middle grade book a long book experience for younger readers. And a quick read for older readers accustomed to young adult novels.