The Witches by Roald Dahl (1983) Jonathan Cape

Witches are real.  And they’re not like you and me.  They’re bald, so they wear wigs, which makes their scalp itch.  Their hands are claws and don’t really have five fingers, so they hide them with gloves.  They don’t have toes, so they wear these terribly uncomfortable shoes to hide that fact.  And they hate kids.  To them kids smell like dog poo – especially if they’re clean.  So, a young boy, who is being raised by his grandmother (because his parents are dead), finds himself trapped at a witch’s convention and turned into a mouse.  Now he must save the rest of the kids in England from being turned into mice too.

The movie that was remade in 2020, Directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer and Stanley Tucci is worth watching.  We did this in our Book and a Movie club.