The boy loves all his grandmother's stories, but he is especially enthralled by the stories about real-life witches who she says are horrific female demons who seek to kill human children. The story is narrated from the perspective of an unnamed seven-year-old English boy, who goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents are killed in a tragic car accident. The book was adapted into an unabridged audio reading by Lynn Redgrave, a stage play and a two-part radio dramatization for the BBC, a 1990 film directed by Nicolas Roeg which starred Anjelica Huston and Rowan Atkinson, a 2008 opera by Marcus Paus and Ole Paus, and a 2020 film directed by Robert Zemeckis. The most common critique against the novel was based on perceived misogyny. It is one of the top all-time children's novels, but received originally mixed reviews. The Witches was originally published in 1983 by Jonathan Cape in London, with illustrations by Quentin Blake who had previously collaborated with Dahl. The witches are ruled by the extremely vicious and powerful Grand High Witch, who arrives in England to organize her plan to turn all of the children in England into mice. The story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and features the experiences of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country. We hope you’ll join us.The Witches is a British children's dark fantasy novel by the British writer Roald Dahl. That we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters we read books cover-to-cover but Typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. World conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous Submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing toįounded in 2018, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people Interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, andĬhoose the ones that are most thought-provoking. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a bookĪnd to carry with us the author’s best ideas. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a More via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become Memorable and interesting quotes from great books. by Jacqueline Rayner About BookQuotersīookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, "Because by then I'll be a very old mouse and you'll be a very old grandmother and soon after that we'll both die together."ĭoctor Who: The Ston. "Will you live another eight or nine years?" She had a way of fondling me behind the ears with the tip of one finger. "I couldn't stand being looked after by anybody else." "Because I would never want to live longer than you," I said. "Why do you say that?" she asked, surprised. "That's great! It's the best news I've ever had!" "A mouse-person will almost certainly live for three times as long as an ordinary mouse," my grandmother said. "How long does a mouse-person live, Grandmamma?" You are a mouse-person, and that is a very different matter." "Well, an ordinary mouse only lives for about three years," she said. "If you really want to know," she said, "I'm afraid a mouse doesn't live for a very long time." "I have been trying to find out everything I can about them." "I have been reading about mice," she said. She sat there smoking away and gazing at the fire. "I've been waiting for you to ask me that."