Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch: A Warm, Funny Tale of Magical School Mishaps

The Worst Witch makes a charming case for the child who keeps getting things wrong. Jill Murphy’s 1974 story sends Mildred Hubble into a school year full of botched potions, awkward broom rides and other people’s quick judgments. When a Halloween mishap threatens Miss Cackle’s Academy, the girl everyone doubts may be the one student who can help.

A witch in training who can’t catch a break

Mildred attends Miss Cackle’s Academy for young witches, where the lessons seem designed to expose every gap between what she intends and what happens. In potions class, she gets muddled and makes the wrong mixture. Her trouble with Ethel, a snobbish classmate, ends with Mildred turning her into a pig by mistake rather than transforming her into a frog.

The school’s new black cats bring another setback. There aren’t enough black cats to go around, so Mildred is given a tabby. Her cat is just as uneasy on a broom as she is, making their lessons an especially uncertain pair act. Headmistress Miss Cackle tries to be patient with Mildred’s clumsiness. Miss Hardbroom, who teaches potions, appears to have less faith that her pupil will improve.

That difference in how the adults see Mildred gives the story a gentle emotional anchor. She makes mistakes, and some of them are her own doing, but she’s also easy to underestimate. Murphy’s heroine is not secretly skilled at everything: her appeal comes from trying again while still being a child who can feel embarrassed, frightened and overwhelmed.

A Halloween display goes wrong

For Halloween, Mildred’s class is asked to put on a special display. Miss Hardbroom chooses a broom formation, a daunting assignment for a girl who already struggles to fly. Ethel sees a chance to get back at Mildred for the pig incident. After Mildred damages her broom, Miss Hardbroom orders Ethel to lend her a spare. Ethel secretly enchants it so that it misbehaves during the performance.

The formation falls apart, and the school blames Mildred. Her classmates and teachers take the accident as another sign of her carelessness, though she knows there’s more to what happened. Facing a meeting with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom the next day feels unbearable, so Mildred runs away from the castle.

Outside, she overhears a group of strange witches discussing a plot to take over the school. Now she has information that could protect everyone, but the people she needs to warn have little reason to trust her. The suspense comes from that simple bind: Mildred must find the courage to act, even after her school has decided she’s the problem. The story puts her mistakes and her chance to be a hero in the same frame, without making the danger too frightening for younger readers.

A lighter magical-school story

My read is that one of the book’s pleasures is how it lets a misfit take center stage without turning her into a flawless heroine. Mildred can be careless, and her choices sometimes make a bad situation worse. But other people’s actions matter too, and the story gives her a chance to show that being accident-prone doesn’t mean being useless. Her persistence is the quality that carries her through.

Readers familiar with Harry Potter may notice some shared ingredients: a young student at a magical school, a severe potions teacher, a privileged bully and a threat to the school. That resemblance is interesting, but it doesn’t make the books interchangeable. Murphy’s story is much lighter in tone and has less serious stakes. Its school trouble, comic mishaps and manageable menace make it a natural fit for younger children who enjoy magic and boarding-school adventures.

The author of the original review recalls a high-school friend making the comparison when the Harry Potter books were popular. The review also points to a small joke in the recurring presence of an intimidating potions teacher: perhaps readers carry lasting memories of difficult chemistry classes. That’s a personal observation, but it fits the affectionate teasing in the book’s view of school life.

From book to screen

The Worst Witch is the first book in a series. Murphy’s story also inspired a television show and a 1986 film. The reviewer describes the film as fun and singles out a particularly trippy Halloween song performed by Tim Curry, who plays a wizard. Fairuza Balk plays Mildred in the film; she later appeared in the more serious witch movie The Craft in 1996.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive, which lists multiple copies. More information about the series, the 1986 film, its Internet Archive copy and YouTube searches for the film or television episodes is also available at the linked pages.

For families choosing a first magical-school adventure, Mildred’s story offers mischief, a little suspense and a heroine whose value becomes clear when others have stopped looking for it. The book’s lasting invitation is to root for the child who hasn’t mastered the broom yet—and to see what she can do when the school needs her.