THE WITCH’S CHILD

A bit of TLC accomplishes what a mighty witch’s powers cannot in this pointed melodrama. When malign Rosina fails to bring Rosalie, the manikin she constructs from leaves and hair, to life, she spitefully puts a spell on her fields that transforms all the local children who play in them into twisted brambles. That spell is only broken after young Lina finds the discarded Rosalie and lovingly repairs her; suddenly animate, Rosalie pulls Lina away from Rosina’s vicious attack, and the witch falls into a fire. Lina’s parents welcome Rosalie into the family, and all the brambles revert to children whose own parents “were thankful for them and properly cared for them, as,” Yorinks concludes, “they should.” In his realistic, sharply drawn illustrations, Smith sends a memorably scary-looking, black-clad witch drifting over desolate countryside to work mischief, but renders the children as a multicultural bunch in modern dress—a contrast that should give young readers an extra shiver or two. Pair this with Audrey Wood’s Heckedy Peg (1987), illustrated by Don Wood, for an effective fright-fest. (Picture book. 6-8)