Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Witches

This is another of my all-time favorite Roald Dahl novels.  When I first read this book as a child, Dahl's version of witches scared me more than most other things!  His witches terrified me in a fascinating, almost-plausible, fantastic way.  For a few days I was pretty sure one was going to ambush me while in the shower (even though that would be totally out of character for them).  In addition to his delightfully unique rendering of witches, Dahl includes liberal doses of humor in The Witches (as he does in most all of his writing, which is part of why I love his writing so), and the whole package is rounded off nicely by the saving-children-from-evil element.  In sum: this book is great.