Witch Week

Infobox Book |
name = Witch Week
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover from the current American edition.
author = Diana Wynne Jones
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = Great Britain
language = English
series = The Chrestomanci Series
genre = Children's, Fantasy novel
publisher =
release_date = 1982
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0-06-029879-0 (paperback)
preceded_by = Charmed Life
followed_by = The Lives of Christopher Chant

"Witch Week" is part of the Chrestomanci series of fantasy novels by Diana Wynne Jones. It was named a School Library Journal Book of the Year. "Witch Week" was first published in the United Kingdom in 1982, and in the United States of America in 1988.

Plot introduction

"Witch Week" follows the story of four students, who, after discovering they are witches, must come to terms with allegations of much-feared witchcraft within the school.

Plot summary

This book is set in an alternate modern-day England, identical to our world except for the presence of witchcraft. Despite witches being common, witchcraft is illegal and punishable by death, policed by a modern-day Inquisition.

At Larwood House, an underfunded boarding school for the adolescent children of executed witches, a note claiming "Someone in this class is a witch" is sufficient reason for the faculty to call in the Inquisitors. Unfortunately, unpopular students Charles Morgan and Nan Pilgrim have just discovered that they can do magic. They summon Chrestomanci, a sourcerer responsible for governing magic throughout all the possible worlds, who helps them outwit the Inquisitor and, ultimately, revise their world's history.

Major themes

One of the major themes in the story is overcoming prejudice. Like much of Diana Wynne Jones' work, "Witch Week" encourages readers to think for themselves and seek to make a positive change in the world.

Allusions to other works

Larwood House recalls the equally dire Lowood School from Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre", although in Witch Week the miserable conditions of the school are often used for comic effect. It is interesting to note that, in almost every version of the book published, the class the story focuses on has a different name, according to the age group the publishers were aiming the book at at the time. The current UK edition calls the class 2Y (which suggests they are in the second year of secondary school and therefore around thirteen), and the current US edition calls it 6B (which implies the children are in the sixth grade and therefore about eleven).

Though often compared to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of books, mainly due to the fact that both are in the children's fantasy genre and set in a boarding school, there are many distinct differences. For example, while in the Harry Potter series many of the pupils have a strong attachment to Hogwarts (the boarding school the series is set in) and enjoy their time there, both the students and teachers of Larwood House detest the school and their time spent there. One also gets the impression Larwood House is a poor school, due to the descriptions of drafty corridors, peeling wallpaper, horrible food, et cetera, most unlike the sumptuous setting of Harry Potter. Also, since witchcraft is illegal in the world in which Larwood House is located, the students only dare do any magic in the utmost secrecy, a sharp contrast to the Hogwarts of Harry Potter, where magic is openly practiced and taught in lessons. In the Harry Potter series, the main protagonists are good friends and help one another out of difficult situations, whereas the characters focused upon in Witch Week dislike each other immensely (until toward the end, at least) and, instead of assisting the other main characters out of trouble, are often content to let the suspicion rest on one of the other suspected witches, in order to divert it from themselves.

Reception and Reviews

SF writer Orson Scott Card, reviewing several DWJ reissues in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction", wrote

Thus it is that underneath what seems to be rather low comedy - brooms that demand to be taken riding by witches (and hoes and rakes and mops that can be ridden, but behave more like mules and pigs than noble steeds); prankster spells at about the level of magic spitwads - there is a continuous foundation of truth. Children "need" powerful adult intervention to help them get control of their powers and keep their powers from taking control of them. Instead of using them for immediate self-gratification, the children instead have to create and respect certain limits in order to avoid destroying themselves and others. Not that anyone ever says such a thing outright. Rather the stories are that lesson, learned over and over again, yet with such humor and extravagant imagination and devastating satire that few readers will imagine that they are being civilized as they read. [Citation
last =Card
first =Orson Scott
author-link =Orson Scott Card
title =Books to Look For
periodical = The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
date =February 1992
url =http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/f&sf/92-02.html
accessdate= 10/1/2008]

References