Ann M. Martin
Scholastic, 1988
Genre:
Realistic, Mystery
Description
Karen’s Witch
opens up telling readers that Karen has two families. When Karen is at her dad’s
house she has to deal with the lady next door who says her name is Mrs. Porter
but Karen knows that her real name is Morbidda Destiny. She has all the telltale
signs of being a witch—she wears long black robes, she smells funny, her hair is
wild and gray, she has an herb garden in her yard, and she cast spells on
people and animals.
It is Karen and her younger brother, Andrew’s, weekend at
their father’s house. That night, Karen has trouble sleeping. She looks outside
her bedroom window and her view of Mrs. Porter's house. She thinks about Mrs.
Porter and about how she’s seen her in her witchy clothes working on her herbs.
She's also seen her broom but she's never seen her ride the broom. She decides
to watch the house until she sees Mrs. Porter get on her broomstick and right
into the night then she could call Kristy, her older step-sister (and a star of
the Baby-sitters Club) and prove to her that Mrs. Porter is a witch. Unfortunately,
she falls asleep before anything exciting happens.
The next morning, as soon as she finishes breakfast, Karen
goes outside to check on Mrs. Porter's house. She isn’t spying—no spying
happens to be one of her father's rules—she is just having a look around. She
tries spying on the house from different angles but see nothing of interest.
She comes to the conclusion that Mrs. Porter is not home and she has not come
back since she flew off last night. Karen’s best friend, Hannie, comes over and
they watch Mrs. Porter gathering herbs from her garden. She's making a creepy
laughing sound. She looks at her cat, Midnight, and whispers something about 12
o'clock. She also mumbles things about an important meeting and that company
will be coming. Karen is scared because Mrs. Porter is clearly going to have a
meeting of witches at her house at midnight tonight.
Later that night as Kristy is tucking Karen into bed, Karen
admits that tonight a witch meeting is going to be held next door. Kristy tells
her she's imagining things. When Kristy asks if there will be warlocks there as
well Karen asks what a warlock is. Kristy tells her they are boy witches and
this utterly blows Karen's mind as she didn't know there was such a thing. Unfortunately,
when Karen wakes up it is 8:30 the next morning. Her alarm did not go off. She
figures that Mrs. Porter put a spell on it so she’d miss witnessing the meeting.
Karen spends her whole morning watching Mrs. Porter’s house
but nothing happens until Kristy catches her spying. Karen moves to the front yard
and hides in between two shrubs. Suddenly the door to Mrs. Porter's house opens
and she walks out with a broom. She starts to sweep the front steps. She then
comes out with some scissors and cut some flowers for her flower garden. She
seems to be getting ready for something. After a while, three cars pull up in
front of her house and some old women emerge. One was carrying a casserole
dish, one had a plate of cookies, and a third had some books and papers. As
Karen watches more cars arrive. Karen runs to Hannie’s house and tells her that
Mrs. Porter is holding the meeting now. She didn't mean midnight, she meant at
noon. Karen tells her that they have to go and save the neighborhood from the
witches.
Karen and Hannie knock on Mrs. Porter’s door. Mrs. Porter is
surprised but let's them in. When she asks what she can do for them Karen says
they would like to go to the meeting and Mrs. Porter shows them the way. The
first thing Karen sees in the room is a lot of people. They are all talking and
laughing and eating and looking at books about plants. Others are exchanging
index cards which Karen figures must be spells. Hannie tells Karen that it looks
like they're having a lot of fun and doesn't appear to be scared anymore. Karen
gets everyone's attention in the room and tells them that she knows their
secret—that they are witches and warlocks. When everyone starts laughing at
them, Karen hears a familiar voice cry her name. It is her grandma. Karen can't
believe that her grandmother is a witch, but her grandmother tells her that Karen
has just crashed a meeting of the Stoneybrook Gardeners Club.
Karen's grandmother demands that the girls apologize. Karen is
forced to explain the entire story to her parents and they tell her that they
understand that she was trying to help the neighborhood but what she did was
wrong because she just accused Mrs. Porter and her friends as being a bunch of
witches and warlocks. They don’t punish Karen too much because she thought she
was doing something good but she was spying which something she is not supposed
to do. They tell Karen that she has to write an apology note to Mrs. Porter.
As Karen, Andrew, and her mom are driving away to go back to
their house, Karen looks back at Mrs. Porter's. She thinks about the secret
only she knows—that Mrs. Porter really is a witch. Maybe she held the gardening
meeting but she is still a witch. She's a clever one and Karen is the only one
who knows it.
Thoughts and
Nuggets of Wisdom for Research
Similar to the Sweet Valley Kids or Twins (or any Sweet Valley
sub-series), the Little Sister series has each book begin with the same basic explanation
of Karen’s life and living situation. Karen has two families. Karen is six
years old going on seven and thinks she's very lucky because she has two
families when most people have only one.
Karen explains, “I have two of lots of other things. I have
two houses. One is little and one is big. I have two pairs of pink sneakers.
And I have two teddy bears and two baby dolls and two pairs of jeans. I even
have two pieces of Tickly, my special blanket. I ripped Tickly in half so I
could have a piece at each house.”
She informs readers that there “are . . . good things about
having two families: Two birthday parties, two Christmases, and all those other
two's.” But there are also bad things about having two families, such as
different rules at each house. She also tends to grab one thing from one house
and leave it at the other so instead of having one of something at each house
she often ends up with two of something at one house and nothing at the other
house.
At Karen’s father’s house, it is so huge that Karen and
Andrew have not only their own rooms, but “a big play room on the second floor
the house.”
The thing that really struck me about this book is the pure affluence
of Karen and her family. In the 1980s there was a big recession so it is
interesting to see Karen’s experiences with two families that seem to be doing
quite well financially. While the book is interesting in that it reflects a
positive spin on divorce, I don’t think a lot of readers would be able to
relate to Karen and her two of everything. I even remember when I was young and
read this series that I kind of hated Karen for her incessant bragging. I wish
I had two of everything. Plus, what kind of message did this give readers who
only had one of everything or even more realistically those readers who had
nothing? It definitely makes Karen a little hard to relate to.
The
other thing I don’t like much about Karen is, and maybe this is supposed to
reflect her age, as a main character she can be a bit of a stuck up brat. Hannie
Papadakis is her best friend when she's at her father's house. When she's at
her mom's house her best friend is Nancy Dawes. All three of them are in the
same class at school. When Karen suggests that she and Hannie pretend to be
witches, she says that “Hannie almost always does what I say.” Throughout the
book poor Hannie is forced to go against her own desires because of Karen
baddgering her to go alone with her crazy schemes. Now I kind of know why when
I was in second grade I made my friend Laura pretend to be Karen while I
pretended to be Hannie—because even then I wanted Hannie to actually stick up
for herself once in a while.
It will be interesting to see how the series progresses and
watch for any personal development in Karen.
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