{"id":80899,"date":"2014-12-16T15:30:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T20:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80899"},"modified":"2014-12-16T15:15:30","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T20:15:30","slug":"half-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/16\/half-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Half Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

John William Waterhouse, The Magic Circle<\/i>, 1886.<\/p><\/div>\n

I like the arbitrary lists the Guardian<\/em> often includes in its children\u2019s book section: best villains in children\u2019s books, best dogs, best mothers. As with all lists, these are made to be debated, and it\u2019s always fun to see what the compiler chooses. But today\u2019s list made me mad. Simply put, it was incomplete. \u201cBest cauldrons in children\u2019s books<\/a>\u201d did not include the cauldron from\u00a0Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure the cauldrons from The Worst Witch<\/em> and\u00a0Wyrd Sisters<\/em> are great. I know the cauldrons found in Lloyd Alexander and J. K. Rowling are high quality. And certainly no one\u2019s denying that Macbeth<\/em>\u2019s cauldron game is strong. (Even if it\u2019s a stretch to call it a children\u2019s book.) One can justify the exclusion of The Black Cauldron<\/em> from this list, and, even though I\u2019d have included Eleanor Estes\u2019s The Witch Family<\/em>,\u00a0I understand that this is a matter of opinion. But\u00a0Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth\u00a0<\/em>is nothing less than a glaring omission.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a fan of E. L. Konigsburg, you probably know her first book. It came out the same year\u20141967\u2014as From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler<\/em>. It\u2019s the story of a loner, the titular Elizabeth, who falls under the sway of another girl, Jennifer, who claims to be a witch and takes Elizabeth on as her apprentice. Elizabeth balks at her mentor\u2019s bossiness, but puts up with it:\u00a0\u201cBefore I\u2019d got Jennifer,\u201d she says, \u201cI\u2019d had no one.\u201d Jennifer declares that the pair will make a flying potion as a test for Elizabeth. But the cauldron actually appears earlier in the story, when the kids are asked to bring in kitchen props for a school play.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n

Jennifer caused a small sensation. She brought in a huge black three-legged pot. It would hold about twenty quarts of water. A little kid could swim in it almost. Jennifer didn\u2019t have to write her name on that pot to identify it. No one else had ever seen anything else like it except in a museum. I happened to know that it was the pot we were going to cook our flying ointment in.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Their spell-casting is based, in part, on that of Macbeth<\/em>\u2019s Weird Sisters. \u201cEvery modern witch ought to read Macbeth<\/em>,\u201d Jennifer says at one point. \u201cThose witches cooked up a wonderful brew. Not flying ointment brew. Trouble brew. And the first ingredient was a toad.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the course of their preparations, Elizabeth makes a pet of the toad, and when it comes time to sacrifice him to the flying ointment, she finds she can\u2019t throw him into the cauldron. She defies Jennifer and the two fight bitterly.<\/p>\n

In an interview, the author claimed that she was inspired by her own family\u2019s move and the isolation her daughter found in their new apartment building. But most of all, she said, she drew on her students at a Florida girls\u2019 school, who were\u00a0\u201csoftly comfortable on the outside and solidly uncomfortable on the inside.\u201d Konigsburg\u2019s books often deal with loneliness and the relationships it forces; this is particularly true in the case of Jennifer<\/em>\u00a0and 1986\u2019s\u00a0Up From Jericho Tel<\/em>, which is, incidentally, one of the weirdest kids\u2019 books ever written, not just in its treatment of issues of class and race, but also in its look at the very real power dynamics that exist among children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to write a full essay about the significance of the cauldron in\u00a0Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth\u2014<\/em>though lord knows I hung papers on less, back in the day\u2014but I would argue that it rates a mention. True, it\u2019s not literally magical: that\u2019s the point. But like so much in the book, and in a lot of good children\u2019s lit, its power lies in possibility, in the thought that the everyday might be invested with magic, and that a strong enough personality might as well be magical.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that wouldn\u2019t all fit in the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u2019s comments section.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like the arbitrary lists the Guardian often includes in its children\u2019s book section: best villains in children\u2019s books, best dogs, best mothers. As with all lists, these are made to be debated, and it\u2019s always fun to see what the compiler chooses. But today\u2019s list made me mad. Simply put, it was incomplete. \u201cBest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[16391,3618,10682,76,4271],"class_list":["post-80899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-cauldrons","tag-childrens-books","tag-e-l-konigsburg","tag-lists","tag-the-guardian"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Best Cauldons in Children\u2019s Books: A Forgotten Contender<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the cauldron from E. L. 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