The title story is of a witch-like woman who kidnaps spoiled and unmanageable children and tries to teach them to be good. Nicely weird, has got a very strong Mary Poppins vibe to it. Ending not great, not a lot of closure but overall i enjoyed my time with it. ( )

A.K.A The Wise Women: A Parable. A story of two very spoiled girls, a princess and a peasant, who are kidnapped by a strange woman for a lesson in life. They have been brought up very unwisely - so their parents need a lesson too.

I got quite irritated at this fairy tale/moral parable. The two girls are so spoiled that you really don’t want to spend time with them at all. It really takes a Wise Woman to make them grow up and be well behaved kids .

Well, it’s a parable - and I guess that's the problem - there’s little enchantment in MacDonald trying to teach us about parenting in a fairy tale. He’s much better in some of his other fairy tales. ( )

It's a princess allegory, but boys will enjoy it too. I'm reading this book out loud to my children. They enjoy and understand the exaggeration and obvious depth, the sense of humor. Macdonald didn't write down to children, but he did write for them. It does reflect the Christianity of the author, with biblical allusions and words. In some ways, the book is also an allegory of biblical child rearing, and much of the depth that will be lost on a young audience will be challenging to an older audience reading along. George Macdonald's writing was much admired by many 20th century authors (both Christian and not Christian). With so few well-written Christian books, this should be on the shelves of Christian children. It should definitely be read aloud; they won't likely pick it up on their own.

With the promise that this was a book that CS Lewis loved, I had high hopes for it. While it did not live up to my hopes, it was still an enjoyable book, even with some of the cliché and trite snippets of themes... children should respect their elders, should appreciate life for all of the work that is needed to be able to live it fully, should not be given too much hot air to put in their own heads.

As a modern parent, there are certainly pieces of this book that I could appreciate... such as the need to teach a child that life is not all fun and games, and that respect is earned and not just given... but at the same time, MacDonald implied that children should not be praised for their little accomplishments, and I could not disagree more. In order to teach a child to say "Thank you" I believe that child needs to hear it. In order for a child to learn to apologize, they need to know that adults can own their mistakes as well.

This book would have gotten higher praise from me were it to concentrate more on the magic of the wise old woman and her ways of teaching the two little girls in the story how to lead a better life rather than repeating the lessons nearly verbatim over and over.

A good, fun read, and something that will likely make me look for more MacDonald, but it did not become one of my prized books. ( )