Read Ruth Chew
Recently, a bona fide bibliophile of a patron – a young mother interested in introducing her children to her favorite childhood stories – visited the children’s room and suggested I read some Ruth Chew. Ms. Chew was a prolific writer whose career authoring children’s books spanned nearly 30 years (the 1960s through the ‘90s). I’d somehow overlooked her in both my childhood and adult reading lives, but better late than never to discover a wonderful writer!
In 2013 and 2014, some of Chew’s novels were reissued with new and more modern cover art but with Chew’s simple, charming illustrations still intact. I found a couple of her chapter books among the library’s paperbacks, including What the Witch Left. It’s the story of two friends, young girls named Katy and Louise. The girls discover some magical gloves and boots locked away in a drawer in Katy’s bedroom, left there for safekeeping by Katy’s grandma’s dear old friend—a woman the girls begin to suspect might just be a witch! When they wear the gloves, Katy and Louise do everything expertly, from playing piano like precocious prodigies to sewing a torn dress with sartorial ease. When they don the boots and take a single step, they traverse 20 miles! And that’s just the beginning of their adventures.
In No Such Thing as a Witch, another tale of magic and mystery, sister and brother Nora and Tad discover their neighbor, Maggie Brown, is a witch who communes with animals. She harbors cats, dogs, lizards, and birds in her small apartment, and feels duty-bound to help animals in need. When people eat Maggie’s enchanted (and utterly delicious!) fudge squares—as Nora and Tad do—they, too, become animal lovers. And if they eat a whole bunch of her fudge, they turn into animals themselves! When a curmudgeonly landlord threatens to call the authorities and report the menagerie, the kids must fully embrace magic to save Maggie and her animals.
These youngsters certainly get into some sticky situations, but one of the lovely things about Chew’s stories is their lack of a sense of true dread and danger. In this era of sometimes really sinister and scary books for young readers (for instance, I’m currently reading Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series, and it’s darn creepy!), it’s nice to be transported back, on occasion, to a gentler and more innocent time in children’s publishing, when whimsy often prevailed over foreboding.
So, if you’re looking for some books full of mystery and suspense, books rich with magic and fantasy but not weighted with violence, gore, or scares to curse you with sleeplessness, Ruth Chew is the writer for you. Her prose is light, her young characters bright and full of curiosity, and her witches mildly mischievous and ultimately good-natured.
Emily @ Central Library Children's Room