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THE LITTLE BROOMSTICK by Mary Stewart

THE LITTLE BROOMSTICK

By

Pub Date: March 8th, 1972
Publisher: Morrow

Scaled-down sorcery comes to Shropshire in the form of a purple flower called Fly-by-Night, a black cat named Tib and a diminutive broomstick which whisks little Mary Smith away to Endor College where the curriculum includes spells, invisibility and the grisly subject of ""transformations."" Mary has no intention of becoming an apprentice witch, but when Madam Mumblechook catnaps Tib for one of her experiments, she is forced to return to the college and out-spell the experts. The rest is a broom-propelled chase by moonlight, winding up a flight of imagination so meagerly provisioned that only Miss Stewart's well-exercised talent for generating suspense out of thin air keeps it off the ground. It works for the moment at least -- long enough for a quick round trip, and if, in the cold light of morning, even Mary ""would not have remembered,"" one can hardly blame her.