Who says you can only talk about witches on Halloween? I love this picture book by Marge Palatini, and so even though we’re still three months out from the spookiest holiday (unless you count National Mother-in-Law Day) I’m going to share it with you.
Gritch the Witch was studying herself in her magic mirror, noting how worn out she looked. She needed to get some beauty sleep, badly. She climbed into bed and was just dozing off when the doorbell rang (or rather, screamed.) With a sigh, Gritch went to the door, to find her sister, Mag the Hag, standing there. She’d come all the way from Maliboo to see Gritch and attend Gritch’s howliday party, which would be the next day. And to make things even worse, she planned to spend the night. If there was anything Gritch hated, it was overnight guests. And she never got along with her sister anyway.
Gritch only had one bed, so the sisters shared. It wasn’t a pretty sight, either. Mag kept putting her feet in Gritch’s face and they ended up having one doozy of a pillow fight.
The next day, their tempers were still out of sorts. They couldn’t agree on how to decorate for the party, and had a big battle of the magic wands to settle the whole dispute. They even fought over how to prepare the party food. Gritch was planning to make her famous rat-tail-tooey, and Mag wanted to make brew-ha-ha. The fighting continued all day.
Finally, their Mummy shows up for the party and settles the squabbling. And what might the monsterish moral be? Why, Mummy knows best, of course!
This book is full of perilous puns and Halloween ha-has. Perfect for your little pumpkin, no matter what time of year! It is out of print, and so the price to purchase is pretty ghoulish, but it’s available at libraries everywhere.
(This book was published by Hyperion in 2003, and was illustrated by Howard Fine.)
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