Witch in the House, by Ruth Chew
If you were a kid in the 70s or early 80s, you may remember Ruth Chew. She wrote a bunch of easy-reading chapter books which are what we would now call urban fantasy, about ordinary kids in the city having magical adventures. (She was particularly fond of witches.)
They don’t have deep characterization or beautiful prose, but they are very good at their own niche, which is small scale, satisfying magic that involves ordinary places, objects, or animals imbued with magic. Chew is incredibly good at bringing to life the imagination of certain types of kids (like me) who liked to imagine being so tiny that you could eat dinner off a bottlecap plate, living on the ceiling of your own home, or having a conversation with your cat.
The down-to-earth elements make them feel like they could happen to you, the way the magic works is often surprising and clever, and they can be quite funny. They have charming illustrations by the author, who invariably draws the exact scenes that you really want to see. (I appreciate this because so often that’s not how it goes.)
In Witch in the House, Laura rescues an absent-minded witch named Sally who has reversed gravity on herself and can’t figure out how to undo it. Sally moves into the ceiling of Laura’s bedroom, where she sleeps on the ceiling of her closet, takes upside-down showers, and accidentally enchants a bathmat into a semi-sentient flying carpet. It’s all utterly delightful, and if it wasn’t what inspired my childhood thing for lying down and imagining myself walking on the ceiling, it certainly encouraged it.
If you never encountered these or would like to revisit them, a handful of them (including this one) have recently been reprinted, both in paper and ebook form, and the original paperbacks are cheap and easy to find used.
I linked the reprint version below. The cover illustration is new (but 100% in the spirit of the original - check out her upside-down witch's hat dragging across the surface of the pond!), but the interior illustrations are the originals.
A Matter-of-Fact Magic Book: Witch in the House[image error]
[image error] [image error]
Here's the original cover:
[image error] [image error]
comments
They don’t have deep characterization or beautiful prose, but they are very good at their own niche, which is small scale, satisfying magic that involves ordinary places, objects, or animals imbued with magic. Chew is incredibly good at bringing to life the imagination of certain types of kids (like me) who liked to imagine being so tiny that you could eat dinner off a bottlecap plate, living on the ceiling of your own home, or having a conversation with your cat.
The down-to-earth elements make them feel like they could happen to you, the way the magic works is often surprising and clever, and they can be quite funny. They have charming illustrations by the author, who invariably draws the exact scenes that you really want to see. (I appreciate this because so often that’s not how it goes.)
In Witch in the House, Laura rescues an absent-minded witch named Sally who has reversed gravity on herself and can’t figure out how to undo it. Sally moves into the ceiling of Laura’s bedroom, where she sleeps on the ceiling of her closet, takes upside-down showers, and accidentally enchants a bathmat into a semi-sentient flying carpet. It’s all utterly delightful, and if it wasn’t what inspired my childhood thing for lying down and imagining myself walking on the ceiling, it certainly encouraged it.
If you never encountered these or would like to revisit them, a handful of them (including this one) have recently been reprinted, both in paper and ebook form, and the original paperbacks are cheap and easy to find used.
I linked the reprint version below. The cover illustration is new (but 100% in the spirit of the original - check out her upside-down witch's hat dragging across the surface of the pond!), but the interior illustrations are the originals.
A Matter-of-Fact Magic Book: Witch in the House[image error]
[image error] [image error]
Here's the original cover:
[image error] [image error]
comments
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