Roald Dahl's "The Witches": Illustrated by Margaret Atwood (1899-1903)

Amazon Customer: Classic. Awesome read for fall. Must read for kids in upper elementary and middle school.

United States on Oct 01, 2023

he zhanghe zhang: This is one of the best books I’ve ever bought! Not only my son enjoyed it even I found it interesting and fun to read! The witches is a have to get, I believe it is a perfect gift for all ages kids from 10+. It’s just a perfect book from the plots to the narration! My son loves it and the quality of the book is great too!
I think it would be a great book if you like realistic fiction or fiction in general! The story is about a little boy and I won’t spoil anymore but the rest just gets better and more exciting ! 5 stars for sure ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

United States on Aug 31, 2023

flore M. Francisque: As a book nerd, my mom buying this was a billion bucks in my eyes. Almost done and I cant wait to buy more!

United States on Jul 29, 2023

Andrew Jensen: I loved this book as a child, and now I’m loving, reading it to my children. Roald Dahl is always so fun!

United States on Jun 30, 2023

Irishapples: Roald Dahl is an excellent author and I am collecting all of his books in the original form not the doctor wants to share with my grandchildren. Both of my boys loved these books when they were young.

United States on Jun 03, 2023

Rajneesh J.: Every kid must be read this book. My daughter exited for this. She added it in her collection as well.

India on May 21, 2023

Kindle Customer: Very well done production and much better than the later dramatisation which I found rather trite and poorly acted. Being a second-hand cassette recording, sound quality will not of course be superb. I found better recordings of this on youtube.

United Kingdom on Dec 19, 2022

J. Ang: What a delightful and wickedly funny book! Ostensibly about scary witches that kill children, Roald Dahl has written a classic heartwarming story of the bond between a newly-orphaned boy, who is strangely never given a name (I didn’t even realise that until I pored through the book again to find his name) and his Grandmama, from Norway. The fact that neither the boy nor Grandmama is named makes the story even more magical on hindsight, because this could be a story about just any boy and his grandmother, giving it an Everyman feel to this tale.

Grandmama’s country of origin is important because Grandmama has stories to tell about her girlhood experiences of witches growing up there, Norway being some sort of high witch grand central. The premise behind her stories is to distract him from his sadness of losing his parents. This is marvellously dealt with because Grandmama’s stories sound almost too fantastical to be true until they return to Bournemouth, England, to honour the boy’s father’s will. There, the boy finds out first hand that witches are real, and that they are just as Grandmama has described them, innocuously like any other woman on the street except...

United Kingdom on Oct 13, 2018

Amazon Kunde: here are only three important things we have to know:

Witches exist.
They look like ordinary women.
They really hate children.
So, when a boy is turned into a mouse, together with his grandma he sets out to fight the witches’ evil plans to turn all childen into mice.

Personal comment:
What is really good about this book is that a fairytale story is put into a more realistic setting. The reader has to grin quietly throughout the story and can really enjoy the colourful language. There are many nonsense words and riddles and rhymes. Varied adjectives and strong expressions are definitely a strong point. Personally, I am not a fan of never ending dialogues. For me the long dialogues were a bit tedious but the rich vocabulary made up for that.

Teacher's Perspective:
The witches provides young readers with the perfect amount of humour and fantasy embedded in a realistic setting. One could use this book as part of a project where students could work on more modern approaches to fairytales or use them if you would like to work more with Roald Dahl's works itself.

Personally, I would use them for age groups 11 to 12 because the story might be a...

Germany on Dec 25, 2016

laxschrift: Dare to read about the true nature of witches and enjoy a fantastic tale with superb illustrations. But be warned - It might frighten you.

Roald Dahl (1916-1960) is a well known writter of stories not only for adults. He began to write children stories as an entertainment for his own children and today kids all over the world like to read them. Like the story of "The Witches", which might be the most frightening children story ever written.
The retired witchophile grandmother tells her grandson everything she knows about witches. They look and act like ordinary women and they really hate children. "Vvye have yu not rrrubbed them all out, these filthy smelly children", shouts the grand high witch and makes a plan to wipe out the children of England. Only the boy and his grandmother can stop them.
The first illustration in the book shows a woman and a witch. But who is who? Look very carefully and read the chapter "How to recognise a witch", and you will find out. These fine drawn illustrations by Quentin Blake support the great story and make you sometime laugh and othertime cry in fear. Like the story itself. You will hear how children have been turned into a slug,...

Germany on Nov 07, 2010