The Witches: The Graphic Novel

by Roald Dahl, Pénélope Bagieu (Illustrator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

As if The Witches wasn't already one of our favorite books, this graphic novel adaptation takes it to another level. Bagieu's brilliant artwork and eye-catching color palette bring the story to life for a contemporary audience, while still maintaining the eccentricity we know and love from Dahl's stories. Perfect for Roald Dahl fans old and new, this fresh take on a classic is sure to be a hit.

Roald Dahl's darkly funny masterpiece, The Witches, now available as a graphic novel from Eisner Award-winning artist Pénélope Bagieu!

Witches are real, and they are very, very dangerous. They wear ordinary clothes and have ordinary jobs, living in ordinary towns all across the world — and there's nothing they despise more than children. When an eight-year-old boy and his grandmother come face-to-face with the Grand High Witch herself, they may be the only ones who can stop the witches' latest plot to stamp out every last child in the country!This full-color graphic novel edition of Roald Dahl's The Witches, adapted and illustrated by Eisner Award winner Pénélope Bagieu, is the first-ever Dahl story to appear in this format. Graphic novel readers and Roald Dahl fans alike will relish this dynamic new take on a uniquely funny tale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338677430
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	75,424
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	GN220L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Roald Dahl was a spy, ace fighter pilot, chocolate historian, and medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and many more brilliant stories. He remains the world's number one storyteller.
Pénélope Bagieu was born in Paris in 1982, a few months after the original publication of Roald Dahl's The Witches. She is the bestselling author of several graphic novels, including the Harvey Award winner California Dreamin’ and Eisner Award winner Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, which has been translated into 17 languages and adapted into an animated series. Pénélope Bagieu lives in Paris.

Date of Birth:

September 13, 1916

Date of Death:

November 23, 1990

Place of Birth:

Llandaff, Wales, England

Place of Death:

Oxford, England

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Brazen by Pénélope Bagieu:"Bagieu's pen transforms these true stories into something that has the tone of a personalized fairy tale. And in the end, this turns out to be just perfect." — The New York TimesPraise for California Dreamin': Cass Elliot Before The Mamas & the Papas by Pénélope Bagieu:"Bagieu's drawings are superlative: soft pencil lines that convey detail without constraining her figures and that animate the characters' exuberant facial expressions." — The Paris ReviewPraise for Exquisite Corpse by Pénélope Bagieu:"Pénélope Bagieu has mastered a magic trick... she can turn paper into flesh. And ink becomes lifeblood... her characters not only breathe and pulsate with vivid life. They also seem entirely, organically authentic in their own skin." — The Washington Post

From the Publisher

10/30/2020

GR 3–6-What a brash undertaking! To retell The Witches as a graphic novel and to replace Roald Dahl's familiar style—it would be unseemly if Bagieu didn't make it so utterly charged. The pacing is incredible as panel after panel and spot after spot of long views, close-ups, wide-angle perspectives, and facial zooms relay the story of a boy-turned-mouse who succeeds in ridding England of witches by putting a mouse-making serum into the soup they are served. This may lure an entirely new generation of readers into Dahl's books—at almost 300 pages, it's a sizable, satisfying tome. It's perfect fourth and fifth grade humor: grotesque humans, horrific witches in disguise as beautifully kitted-out women, with high heels and push-up bras, leering close takes of a chef's crotch as a mouse in his pants bulges, and another scene of the man in tidy whities, pants down. Is this in good taste? No. Is it funny? Yes. Let's leave controversy aside. Women fare badly, parents even worse, the message of the boy's acceptance of being a mouse with a lifespan that matches his caretaker dubious, and the chain-smoking grandmother (who has brown skin, as does her young charge) at the center of the tale won't win any awards as a healthy role model, but she is the most loving person present. VERDICT Warts and all, whether witches or Dahl, the book will be devoured by readers and shared widely among peers.—Kimberly Olson Fakih, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

2020-08-18
Even being transformed into a mouse doesn’t keep an 8-year-old orphan boy from turning the tables on a convention of child-hating witches in this graphic makeover of the classic novel from 1983.

Generous use of wordless panels and close-up, exaggerated reaction shots lends both speedy pacing and cinematic flair to this version—though so deliciously terrifying is the Grand High Witch once she takes off her disguise that viewers may be compelled to linger over every hideous detail. The disgusting witchly potion concocted to turn all of Britain’s children into mice, plus blood-splashed scenes of the unnamed young hero getting his tail chopped off and the Grand High Witch—herself transformed into a (fantastically feral-looking) mouse and smashed to smithereens—are showstoppers too. The plot remains unchanged overall except that Bruno Jenkins, the unsuspecting lad the witches use as their test subject, is switched for an unnamed and more competent girl and the protagonist’s cigar-smoking, purple-haired Grandmamma has both her thumbs. But unlike the 1990 film, here our protagonist remains a mouse as he and his new mouse friend charge off at the end to serve just deserts to all the witches of the world. The boy and his elderly caregiver are brown-skinned, and the witches are ethnically diverse.

A helter-skelter take on Dahl’s gleefully gross rodentine ruckus. (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)

Kirkus Reviews