The Witches (Lilia Araujo)

Reading Report 1 

Title of the book: The Witches (1983)

Name of the author: Roald Dahl

Genre: Children's dark fantasy

Reasons for choosing this particular book:

I decided to read The Witches because the genre it belongs to sounds really interesting to me. Apart from that, I found myself wondering what type of story would unveil after I read the synopsis since I frankly cannot imagine what is going to happen. Also, I like the idea of it having illustrations included so much because it makes it easier for me to picture the characters and to understand other fictional elements. And finally, it is really unrelated to the story per se, but since it was extremely difficult for me to find the book online, I decided to challenge myself to find it and read it. 

Setting, place and time the story develops:

Part of the story was set in Norway, while the other part in the United Kingdom. As far as I could read, a time frame was never mentioned.

Brief description of the main characters:

First, a boy was introduced. He explained that even though both of his parents were Norwegian, he was born in England due to his father's business. He could be described as a clever, cautious child because he was aware of just how dangerous witches were. In addition to that, he sounds mature for his age because it took him quite some time to believe in what his grandmother told him about witches.

Besides him, his Norwegian grandmother was introduced. She seemed to be relatively easy-going since she didn't mind the idea of his grandson starting to smoke at the tender age of 7. 

Summary of the chapters I've read so far:

A boy started talking about how there were real witches out there. Creatures who pretended to be women and who lived around us, and whose main objective was to erase all children.  Later, he explained that even though they were never caught and that no country was free of witches, thankfully there were not so many of them. Besides, he mentioned that despite the fact that witches didn't look dangerous at first glance, he was well aware of certain tips to recognize them.

Sometime after that, he talked about his grandmother and how she came from the country the first witches appeared from: Norway. He also told the story about how he lost his parents in an accident and that he had to stay with the old lady. In order for him to get distracted, she would tell him stories. At some point, the lady started talking about witches and how she had met 5 children who had been victims of them. After that, she explained that a witch would always wear gloves and a wig; she would have a big nose, eyes that change color, feet without toes, and blue spit. 

Some days later, a man arrived at their home with the boy's father's will. On it it said that he wanted him to live with his grandmother in England so, because of this, they had to move in spite of not wanting to. She went on about witches and how they behaved differently depending on the country they came from. Also, she talked about the Grand High Witch, who was said to be the ruler of them all. She even talked about witchophiles, which were people who studied about witches, and how she was a retired witchophile who used to track down the Grand High Witch.

Eventually, the boy explained his first encounter with a witch, how she tried to lure him to come down from the tree he was building a treehouse at, and how both his grandmother and him were trembling when he told her what had happened.