Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Dis­as­ter in Salem

(Ama­zon, Goodreads)

By Ros­alyn Schanzer

(Ama­zon, Goodreads, Web­site)

Pub­lished by National Geo­graphic Children’s Books on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2011

In the lit­tle colo­nial town of Salem Vil­lage, Mass­a­chu­setts, two girls began to twitch, mum­ble, and con­tort their bod­ies into strange shapes. The doc­tor tried every rem­edy, but noth­ing cured the young Puri­tans. He grimly announced the dire diag­no­sis: the girls were bewitched! And then the accu­sa­tions began.

The riv­et­ing, true story of the vic­tims, accused witches, crooked offi­cials, and mass hys­te­ria that turned a mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness affect­ing two chil­dren into a witch hunt that took over a dozen people’s lives and ruined hun­dreds more unfolds in chill­ing detail in this young adult book by award-​​winning author and illus­tra­tor Ros­alyn Schanzer.

With a pow­er­ful nar­ra­tive, chill­ing pri­mary source accounts, a design evok­ing the period, and styl­ized black-​​white-​​and-​​red scratch­board illus­tra­tions of young girls hav­ing wild fits in the court­room, witches fly­ing over­head, and the Devil and his ser­vants ter­ror­iz­ing the Puri­tans, this book will rivet young read­ers with nov­el­is­tic power.

Taught in mid­dle and high schools around the U.S., the 17^th-​​century saga remains haunt­ingly res­o­nant as peo­ple strug­gle even today with the urgent need to find some­one to blame for their misfortunes.

I picked this up while at the BEA and I have to say for a kid’s book this is pretty infor­ma­tive.  I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know hav­ing been inter­ested in it as a child when we cov­ered it in school.  How­ever, I think had I read this book then, I would’ve found it very enjoy­able.  It had some great details, but it flowed with­out get­ting to heavy on the dates of events. (One of the things I was always bad with when it came to history.)

If your child is look­ing for a good book on the Salem witch tri­als, I would sug­gest this once it is fin­ished.  The draw­ings that were included in this pre­view copy went along well with the text and I think once it is com­plete it will be a very nice fin­ished book.  If you don’t know any­thing about the tri­als, this is a good book to start with as it will give you a lot of detail on the main peo­ple (adults and chil­dren) who were involved.