Tuesday, October 20, 2009

DORRIE AND THE BLUE WITCH by Patricia Coombs

When doing a week about witches, we would be remiss not to include the Dorrie books by Patricia Coombs. There were 20 books in the Dorrie series, written in the early 1960’s through the early 1990’s. We’ve been reading these books for 40 many, many years and they hold up just as well today. I know this, because I just re-read one of them today and really enjoyed it.

As you can see, this is not a brand new book. My sister found it for me on ebay because almost all of the Dorrie books are out of print. This one used to be in a school library and why it’s still not there, I don’t know. But their loss is my gain:D

This is Dorrie. There’s just something about her that appeals to me. It might be the witches shoes (which I love!), the mismatched socks,

her messy room. My room has never been that messy! Honest. I think Gink the cat might have a lot to do with the appeal. Who doesn’t have a black (and white) cat sitting around helping you?

Also, Dorrie and her mother live in an amazing house with lots of rooms

Paneled hallway? Check! Rooms upon rooms? Check!

Awesome stairs leading up to the tower? Oh, yeah!

In this book, there’s a bad witch (you know she’s bad because she’s blue) who tries to kidnap Dorrie. Her name is Mildred (don’t all bad witches have names like Mildred) and her evil plans are thwarted by Dorrie’s resourcefulness.

I’ll let you read the book to see how Dorrie outsmarts Mildred, and she’s not the only youngster using her brains against older adversaries. Some other great witch books include  The Wednesday Witch by Ruth Chew, The Little Leftover Witch by Florence Laughlin (oh, I love this book!), not to mention The Witches by Roald Dahl and The Witch Next Door series by Norman Bridwell (of Clifford the Big Red Dog fame.)

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