Calendar Girls October: Best Book With Witches

​Hello friends! Welcome to another edition of The Calendar Girls!

Calendar Girls was a monthly blog event created by Melanie at MNBernard Books and Flavia at Flavia the Bibliophile and will now be hosted by Katie at Never Not Reading and Adrienne at Darque Dreamer Reads. It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song Calendar Girl.

Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. 

So without further ado, this month’s theme is…

Oooh, topical! 

When I started looking at options for this category I was amazed at just how many of my favourite novels have witches in them. Again, there’s one incredibly obvious choice that I’m not going to go for but I feel like I have to at least acknowledge some of the brilliant books that I didn’t pick. So, honourable mentions go to:

– Terry Pratchett (various books, all brilliant)

– Neil Gaiman for Stardust and possibly The Ocean at the End of the Lane (are the Hempstocks witches?)

– Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett together for Good Omens (highly recommended)

– Roald Dahl for The Witches (which absolutely terrified me as a child)

– Helen Nicoll for Meg and Mog (adorable children’s book)

– Katherine Arden for The Bear and the Nightingale (debatable whether Vasilisa is a witch – I’m guessing this might be revealed in the final instalment of the trilogy)

However, despite the sheer abundance of options my pick is…

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy

Argh, I have soooo many fond memories of reading this book as a child. I loved the character of Mildred Hubble and reading about how she was literally the worst witch at Miss Cackle’s Academy, making enemies of the smarmy Ethel Hallow and getting witchery totally wrong. The book contains all of the classic children’s book tropes (doing the right thing, perseverance, strict teachers being harsh but fair) but never comes across as preachy or holier-than-thou. There’s a whole series of Worst Witch books and I loved them all for their fast pacing, easy reading style and the sheer likeability of Mildred and her friends.

It was also a great mid 90’s kids TV programme that I weirdly still remember all the words in the theme tune to.

https://youtu.be/YQgW_v9ReDk

Also, check out the Moaning-Myrtle-a-like! I knew I’d seen that witch somewhere before…

So, have you read The Worst Witch? What would be your Calendar Girls pick? Let me know in the comments!