EARWIG AND THE WITCH
-
- 4,99 €
-
- 4,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Everyone knows that orphanages are horrible places. But Earwig has a surprising amount of power over everyone else at St Morwald’s Home for Children, and loves it there. So the last thing she wants is to be sent to live with the very strange Bella Yaga…
Earwig was left at St Morwald's as a baby. Unlike the other children, she loves it there, mostly because she has the run of the place and seems to be able to persuade people to do as she wants. Then one day Earwig is chosen to live with a very strange couple: Bella Yaga, her new 'mother', is actually a horrible witch. Earwig will need all her ingenuity (and some help from a talking cat) to survive…
Reviews
“…a delightful sampler of her originality and imagination, with small unexpected touches.” Nicolette Jones, Sunday Times Culture, Children’s Book of the Week
“There's a nice helping of magic and some brisk upbeat sentiment in this crisply written story… How the feisty Earwig outwits the pair with her own special skills and the help of Bella Yaga's cat Thomas is deliciously entertaining.” Julia Eccleshare, The Guardian
Praise for ENCHANTED GLASS:
‘Blissful’
Guardian
‘Wynne Jones is superb, mixing the comical with the magical’
The Times
About the author
Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) spent her childhood in Essex and began writing fantasy novels for children in the 1970s. With her unique combination of magic, humour and imagination, she enthralled generations of children and adults with her work. She won the Guardian Award in 1977 with Charmed Life, was runner-up for the Children's Book Award in 1981 and was twice runner-up for the Carnegie Medal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This funny story updates fairy tale conventions while highlighting Jones's subversive wit and her firm belief that children can control their own lives. Earwig rules the roost at St. Morwald's Home for Children until she is adopted by a witchy woman named Bella Yaga with "one brown eye and one blue one, and a raggety, ribby look to her face." Earwig hopes to learn magic from Bella Yaga, but is trapped in the woman's decrepit house, sharing it with the Mandrake, an impossibly tall and grouchy being. Powerful and evil, Bella Yaga uses Earwig as a second pair of hands for grinding up disgusting things in bowls ("The only thing wrong with magic is that it smells so awful," Earwig quips). The witch and the Mandrake, however, have never before dealt with a determined girl who claims alpha status; Zelinsky's spot art, not all seen by PW, makes it clear that the squinty, pigtailed heroine is not someone to be trifled with. Featuring delightfully odd characters and eccentric magic, this all too brief tale is a fine introduction to the late author's more complex YA novels. Ages 8 12.
