The Worst Witch All At Sea

The Worst Witch All At Sea by Jill Murphy is a witch school story for 7 year olds about losing the one thing you actually care about at school.

What happens

Mildred Hubble is back for the Summer Term at Miss Cackle's Academy. She is in her second year and her reputation as the worst witch in the school is already fixed.

The Summer Term starts in March, and it is snowing hard enough to knock girls off their broomsticks. Mildred arrives with icicles on her hat and crash-lands in a snowdrift, because her tabby cat tries to get off the broom in mid-air.

Five minutes into term she is called to the headmistress's study.

It is not about the crash. Miss Cackle has been watching and has decided, very kindly and very cheerfully, that Tabby is useless. He cannot fly properly. He is stripy when all the other cats are black. He looks untidy on parade.

So Tabby is going down to the kitchen to catch mice, and Mildred is getting a properly trained black cat called Ebony instead.

Mildred tries to explain that Tabby is frightened of mice. Miss Cackle laughs and tells her no cat is afraid of mice. And that is that.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This happens in the first few pages and it is genuinely sad. Mildred hands her cat over to the school cook, walks away, and can hear him yowling behind her. She cries in assembly and her form-mistress tells her to pull herself together.

If your child goes to pieces about animals being taken away from people, that opening will be hard going. If they get furious about unfairness instead, they will be right behind Mildred, who is planning to get him back before she reaches the top of the stairs.

The other half of the term is a treat. Mr Rowan-Webb, the magician Mildred fished out of the school pond the term before, has invited her whole form to stay at his house by the sea for a week.

Everyone is delighted. Mildred asks whether Tabby could come too and gets an eyebrow in reply.

The school itself is the best running joke. There is no glass in the windows. There are heaps of snow inside the corridors. The kitchen is so far from the dining hall that the food is always stone cold, and the girls are sent out into the freezing yard for healthy fresh air.

The uniform has just been changed from checks to plain black, because Miss Hardbroom decided checks were frivolous. Nobody can quite believe it.

Miss Hardbroom is worth it on her own. She can silence a classroom with one look and makes a free seaside holiday sound like something Mildred has done wrong.

What to read next

This one follows straight on from A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch, where that same second year begins and the frog in the school pond turns out to matter rather a lot.