A WITCH LIVES HERE

A boy wants to know: If it looks like a witch’s house, does that make it a witch’s house?

Felix, a tan-skinned youngster with black hair swept back into wings, and his Toto-look-alike terrier, Spike, are walking through the woods one morning when they happen upon an ominous-looking house. Felix wonders if a witch lives there. A witch enthusiast, he has a pertinent book at hand: 23 Witchy Clues To Spot. Sure enough, Clue #1 is “a tall black house in the middle of a forest.” Felix and Spike poke around the house—no one seems to be home—ticking off clues. By the time the pair reach the final clue—a potions room—they’re feeling at home enough to whip up their own concoctions. When they’re through, they pack up their potions, don one pointy black hat each, hop on a broomstick, and head home. That grim-looking house they just visited may or may not have a witchy occupant, but now Felix’s house does: It’s him! There’s something subtle and sweet here about the wrongheadedness of jumping to conclusions about people based on superficial characteristics, although it’s possible that Dickson has playfulness rather than a message in mind. (Nothing wrong with that.) While the story isn’t tied to any particular time period, Gilbuena hews to a subdued palette evoking the medieval era, and her clean-lined digital illustrations are admirably orderly for all the witchy paraphernalia they must accommodate.

Bewitching and beguiling.