(You can listen to this episode here.)

Deborah and Mary Grace celebrated Halloween by reading two books about witches, Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett, which was published in 1953, and The Little Leftover Witch by Florence Laughlin, which was published in 1960. Both books are about lonely little witches who find homes with non-magical families. Deborah had read both books as a child; both were new to Mary Grace.

Here’s the original cover of The Little Witch, with illustrations by Helen Stone. Two of Stone’s other books were selected as Caldecott Honor Books.

Here’s the original cover of The Little Leftover Witch, which gives you some idea of the illustrations by Sheila Greenwald, which Debby enjoyed as a child and missed in the current edition, which doesn’t have illustrations.

Other witch-related books mentioned on the episode:

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth Speare (1958)

The Active Enzyme Lemon-Freshened, Junior High School Witch by E. W. Hildick (1973)

The Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum

The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling

And, finally, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E. L. Konigsburg, which was featured on our second episode.

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms. You can listen to it on Buzzsprout here.

You can find Debby’s author interviews on her blog, Books Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.