One of the treasured artefacts of my childhood, Patricia Coombs' series about Dorrie - a little witch whose hat was always on crooked, whose socks were always mismatched, and whose penchant for trouble never failed to produce an adventure - kept me continuously entertained. I must have checked out some of these Dorrie books from the library a hundred times! I recall particularly enjoying Dorrie and the Blue Witch, although every entry in the series was superb. Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered, these many years later, that Coombs had authored twenty Dorrie books, some of them - like this first installment - completely unknown to me!

When her mother, the Big Witch, goes into town one Saturday to do some shopping, she asks Dorrie to be good, and to clean her room. Of course everything is more fun when you use magic, and Dorrie - accompanied by her faithful cat Gink - decides to use the Big Witch's colorful powders to accomplish her task. Her haphazard potion-making produces the inevitable mishaps - from turning the entire house blue, to changing Cook into a horse - and Dorrie learns that some things (like cleaning) require work, not magic...

A charming beginning to a magical series, Dorrie's Magic offers a fantastic variant of a story many young readers will instantly recognize. Coombs' adorable illustrations are a perfect match for her story, conveying the quirky but loving atmosphere of Dorrie's home. How I wish that these books would be reprinted, so today's young readers might enjoy their magic! ( )