The Second Witch

by Jack Sendak, Uri Shulevitz (Illustrator)

Strange things began to happen in the village of Platzenhausen. Smoke streamed from a little house in the woods, empty for years. A little girl with long black hair was seen running through the forest, a bear at her side. And one morning the villagers awoke to find that they had all turned blue.

The people of Platzenhausen were well known for their selfishness, until the antics of Vivian, the girl witch, shocked them out of their complacency.

Jack Sendak has tailor-made a lovable good-bad witch, an adventurous boy, and a unique "human" bear. He has drawn a magic circle around his little village, and children will find themselves happily entrapped until the story ends and the spell is broken.

Uri Shulevitz's sensitive line drawings add their own magic to this intriguing fairy tale.

Genres: Fantasy, Childrens

95 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 1965

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This bizarre story was a bit disturbing. The plot is about the German village of Platzenhausen and how despicable its people are. Decades ago, the village was plagued by a witch because of its people's rudeness to one another. The village was spared by a young boy who befriended the witch. He was supposed to never forget her, but he did. And now she has returned to wreak more havoc on the village. The reader learns that the first boy grew up to be the Mayor. When Vivian, the witch, befriends a new boy, Andrew, he vows not to repeat the same mistake that the Mayor did. And he doesn't. She is remembered by him and thus by the village for decades to come. The village people are also better because of it. Some of the oddball things of the plot are really oddball or disturbing, but the worst is that Vivian gives human speech and thought to a bear, Stanwix. Believing that Stanwix is the demon witch, the villagers shoot and kill him. I do think Sendak was writing his own version of propaganda against Germans after WWII because the story is a bit horrifying.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The town folk of the village of Platzenhausen have a reputation of only caring for themselves as individuals. That is about to change when a young girl moves into the forest, and takes up residence in a house that was previously inhabited by a witch many years ago, before she was run off by the villagers. A young boy named Andrew befriends the girl whose name is Vivian and happens to be witch.