BED-KNOB AND BROOMSTICK

Back in 1943 The Magic Bed-Knob enchanted a few- very few-readers with its story and depressed us with its format. Then Women's Day ""discovered"" Mary Norton and serialized The Borrowers and The Magic Bed-Knob, a departure from routine for the magazine, and a great success. Now a different publisher is reissuing The Magic Bed-Knob and adding Bonfires and Broomsticks, published hitherto only in England...So much for the record. The text is its own best advocate, as it regales the reader with entertaining adventures for Carey, Charles and Paul when they spend an enchanted summer with an old aunt in Bedfordshire, and encounter prim Miss Price in her garden. This fragile lady is practising to become a witch, the children discover. And the hardest part, she confides to them, is learning to be wicked. In the capricious days that follow, the children become part of the experiment with the acquisition of a magic bed-knob, and are allowed to participate in an off-beat romance between Witch Price and Necromancer Emelius. Here's enchantment realistically experienced, whimsy that has elements of sophistication.