Any parent will recognize “the witching hour”: the time between dinner and bedtime when anything can happen: playtime, bathtime, dancing—but also spills, fusses, and chaos. This whimsical tale looks at what happens when “the witching hour” happens in a family of witches, specifically two moms and their two children, who live in a treehouse and wear acorn caps and upside-down flowers instead of traditional witches’ hats.
It turns out, their life is not so different from what readers may be used to, albeit with a touch of magic. When the baby gets cranky, the moms try everything to distract and soothe, including a bath, snacks, bouncing on a floating broomstick, and conjuring up pink poodles, which “worked last night,” the book wryly observes. Parents who are at a loss for a consistent bedtime solution will sympathize. The older child tries to help, too, offering a beloved stuffie.
Finally, just as the parents seem at wit’s (or witches’s?) end, the baby falls asleep, as it always does, and “The witching hour is over.”
Author Jennifer Harris’s rhythmic (but not rhyming) text is a joy to read, while illustrator Adelina Lirius’s images add a magical warm and coziness to the tale. This is a highly recommended family read sure to become a real-life bedtime favorite.
One mom has light skin and brown hair, the other has brown skin and darker brown hair, and the children have light tan skin and brown hair.
