10 Books... With Context - The Witches

I doubt this one is a surprise either; well, the author at least, although the choice of book may have been a bit leftfield…

The Witches
By Roald Dahl
First published in 1983

What’s It About?
A young orphaned boy (aren’t they always in children’s literature) and his grandmother visit a seaside hotel so she can recover from illness, only to discover that they are in the middle of a worldwide convention of child-eating witches…

Background
In the highly unlikely event that you don’t know who Roald Dahl is, he was and remains one of the most successful (and emulated) children’s authors of all time, notching up such classics as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, James And The Giant Peach, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG and many more besides. He also had a brief career as a screenwriter, writing the scripts for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and You Only Live Twice as well as one of his own stories for Tales Of The Unexpected. 
The Witches was inspired by Dahl’s childhood holidays spent in Norway, listening to bedtime stories about witches and magic…

Why’s It Good?
Because Roald Dahl stories combine a love of language and nonsense with that dark undertone that most kids love in their stories. Why have I picked this one over any of the others? Not because I don’t love the rest of his books - I devoured them all as a kid and enjoyed every single one - but because this was the first one I consciously remember being a “new” Roald Dahl book, one that I hadn’t already pored over. It’s an odd sensation to define but that made this book feel like the first one of his that was “mine”, one that hadn’t already been popular with loads of people. Add to that some vivid descriptions of witches and the genuinely tense section where the boy (who remains unnamed throughout the book as does his grandmother) is trapped in the hotel ballroom with a collection of witches unmasking themselves.
Side note - this one also has a nice crossover with my lifelong Jim Henson obsession given that the make-up and effects for the film adaptation were created by the Jim Henson Creature Workshop, leading to some genuinely horrific transformation scenes (although the film disappointingly opts for a standard Hollywood happy ending as well as deciding to give the boy the name Luke).
If you only read one Roald Dahl book, well, I’d probably still recommend Charlie And The Chocolate Factory but this one remains a firm favourite for me.