Book Cover Image:
Book Summary: Earwig
is a young orphan who loves the orphanage she lives in because everyone there
will do what she wants them to do.
Suddenly, one day, Earwig finds herself being adopted by an unusual
couple, Bella Yaga and Mandrake. Upon
arriving at their home, she realizes that Bella Yaga is actually a witch and
Mandrake is also a powerful creature of some sort. Earwig decides that this is simply a
challenge that she must overcome to return to the orphanage and her friends
there. She decided she will help Bella
Yaga in return for learning magic.
However, she quickly learns that Bella Yaga just wants to use her. In order to remedy the problem, she enlists
the house cat Thomas, who is no ordinary cat, to learn spells. As Earwig and Thomas work together they are
quickly able to establish a new role for themselves in the home.
APA Reference of
Book:
Jones, D.W. (2012). Earwig
and the witch. New York, NY. Greenwillow Books.
Impressions: This
is a book that would certainly appeal to many young readers. It is a light-hearted, humorous tale of a
resilient young girl. Readers will find
themselves rooting for Earwig and the cat, Thomas to best Bella Yaga. The illustrations found throughout the book
help readers visualize the characters and situations that Jones has created in
her imagination. Earwig is the underdog
who you want to find success in her given situation.
Earwig is a
wonderful example of the fantasy genre.
From the time she is picked up from the orphanage, where her mother left
her because witches were chasing her, we enter an imaginary world of magic and
unusual creatures. The story has
multiple spells, rat bone powder, talking cats, magical walls, witches growing
extra hands, and more. Any reader
looking for an escape into a silly, imaginary, and non-scary world, this would
be a wonderful recommendation.
Professional
Review:
Gr 2–5—Earwig is a most unusual girl. As a baby, she arrived
at St. Morwald's Orphanage under mysterious circumstances. Since then, she has
possessed a strange affinity for making the staff do exactly what she
wants—from preparing her favorite meals to buying her new clothes. For this
reason, Earwig goes out of her
way to avoid being adopted. Then comes the fateful day Bella Yaga, accompanied
by Mandrake, her sinister shape-shifting sidekick, arrives at St. Morwald's and
takes Earwig to do her grunt
work. Slave duty doesn't even come with magic lessons. But with the help of
Thomas, a feline familiar, Earwig
outsmarts the witch in a most
ironic way. And before long, she has both Bella Yaga and Mandrake under her
control. This appears to have been the first in a charming new series, cut
short by the author's untimely passing in 2011. Earwig is a plucky, albeit bossy, heroine, and the story is packed
with wit and humor. Zelinsky's illustrations enhance this imaginative tale.
Source: LeMerise, A.J. (2012). Earwig
and the witch [Review of the book Earwig and
the witch by D. W. Jones]. School Library Weekly, 58(2), 91. Retrieved from http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2052/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=256569
Found Through: UNT Library Database – LexisNexis Academic
Link: http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2052/hottopics/lnacademic/?verb=sr&csi=256569
Library Uses: While this is a chapter book, it is also
a fairly quick read. It could possibly
be read over the course of two library meetings. After completing the book, you good allow
students to be creative, and create their own spell to fix a problem that they
wish they could fix. Just like Earwig
solves her problems in the book by finding her own spell, students could be
imaginative and creative as well. They
could demonstrate what their spell would do through a digital graphic, or they
could simply draw a picture and write a caption to go with it.
This could also be a good story to use when presenting the
fantasy genre. The students, or the
class, come up with the elements of fantasy that are present in the story. Then, they could either add another element
of fantasy to the story that the author did not include but they think might
have been fun in the story, or come up with examples of fantasy that they have
seen in other stories to compare. They
could draw a picture of the fantasy they have created or remembered from a
previous book and write a short synopsis about the fantasy.
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