ELROY AND THE WITCH'S CHILD

by Geoffrey Hayes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1982

Elroy, a button-eyed little cat with a baby-blue bow tie, meets the yellow-haired witch's child Linda, along with the witch herself, Granny Crackbaggy, on the morning after his very first night on his own in the woods. As the comic-strip story opens we see Elroy sauntering off, bundle on stick, from a rustic little house identified by its sign as Miss Whisker's Foundling Home. He diddles around for almost half the book, demonstrating by the way his handy resourcefulness, arrogance, and fear of creatures and noises. Then the meeting occurs in a typical comic-strip sequence, with Elroy stealing the witch party's pancakes, their affectionate mutt backing him into the fire, and Linda and Granny solicitously tending to his burnt tail. Elroy fixes their wagon wheel and seems the answer to lonely Linda's prayers, but his expressed scorn for Granny's cures leads to his sauntering off defiantly once more--until, struggling with himself, he chooses companionship over independence and runs to catch up with the wagon. The pictures busy this up with cartoon-style bumps and splashes and flying leaves but no real action. This is not as cloying as some of Hayes' picture stories, but it relies chiefly on the button-like cuteness of the characters to hold it together--and that's a sticky sort of glue.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1982

Categories: CHILDREN'S