Genre: Traditional Literature
Read for Folklore assignment.

Not my favorite "witchy" story (I thought it ended abruptly), but I did enjoy the illustrations a lot. ( )

This tale, from the African American oral tradition, was originally collected by Zora Neale Hurston. A brother and sister go live with their grandma because their parents have been killed by the three witches. One day grandma decides to go get food for the home and the two are left alone. The witches come to get them, and almost succeed when the grandmother comes home and saves the day. This gets scary. Charming illustrations. The frightening illustrations of the odd looking witches add to the story. In the afterword, the illustrator mentions that Zora Neale Hurston researched and collected tales from the African American oral tradition. Ages 4 - 8

I was excited when I saw this book at the library and checked it out without hesitation because I'm always excited to read folklore, legend and mythology (original or re-versioned), but this that's about as far as the excitement got for me. The cover art is cool, quite vibrant and just the right mix of scary/silly for the age range this book is aimed at...but the artwork inside just doesn't do anything for me...it's rather flat and two dimensional, it has no depth. The only thing it really has going for it is that it's quite vibrant and lively in the authors choice of color...there just isn't any dimension to it and that takes away from the story for me.

The story itself is ok, but not great. I found it difficult to tell who is speaking when and how it should be read aloud...I had to read it myself twice and then once out loud before I got a sense of how best to read it to my kids. I don't mind working hard to get something right, but this just didn't work for me. I give it a C+, it's a great idea...but the execution just doesn't work for me. Most of all I get the sense that this would work best in a larger group reading (rehearsed ahead of time) where you could get a couple of children to read the brother and sisters parts with a narrative story teller doing the rest (all at the same time), I think it would build better to climax and be more engaging for the listeners. I should like to try that sometime and see if The Three Witches is more fun that way! ( )

Two children are chased by three witches to eat them. They climb into a tree to wait for help ( )