Which Witch?

By: Eva Ibbotson

Narrated by: Prunella Scales

Arriman the Awful, Wizard of the North, is tired of being the most evil wizard in the world so he decides he must get married and have a son to take over. His wife must be a witch with awesome powers but the organised contest has awful consequences.©1979 Eva Ibbotson (P)2009 BBC Audiobooks Ltd

So, so cozy and silly and good.

This is one of my all time favorite childhood books, performed to perfection by Prunella Scales (whom I also adored as Sybil Fawlty in the ridiculous tv show Fawlty Towers, which my very American parents for some reason owned on dvd). Every character's voice, from The Wizard Watcher to Madame Olympia, was exactly as I always imagined it. I love when a children's book tells a morally complex story. And I especially love the lesson that we can embrace "evil" like the Witches' --- appreciating that darkness and decay are as natural and noble as light and life --- while rejecting real cruelty and malice, like that of Matron. Similar to the works of John Waters or Terry Pratchett, this book has brought me a lot of comfort and joy through the years AND made me think.