The Cruelty of School-tees: The Worst Witch and the Hogwarts Problem
Like many readers who have a modicum of Internet awareness, I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to find a thing to replace Harry Potter as my go-to “wizard school” series. There are, of course, many to choose from. Ursula Le Guin infamously said of Harry Potter that the work is, to paraphrase, derivative of a genre of boarding school tales, some of them featuring magic and some of them not. Indeed, one doesn’t have to go far to find obvious influences on the HP series, some of them so blatant that they border on plagiarism (or, in the case of the author claiming they were unaware, incredulity). The Worst Witch (1974) by Jill Murphy preceded the first HP novel by 23 years and is perhaps the most obvious of more popular novel’s influences. It is also an example, if you’ll forgive me saying it, of a book whose story and tropes were better presented when pilfered by successor novels in the same genre. The first novel in the series follows Mildred Hubble, a first-year at Cackle’s Academy, a boarding school for young witches. The main plot centers on Mildred attempting to teach her new familiar (a cat she names Tabby and which is the only cat that isn’t black) while avoiding the ire of rival student Ethel and potions master Miss Hardbroom and making a fool of the school. Naturally, she mostly fails at all of these things and only avoids an uncomfortable “interview” with headmistress Cackle by uncovering a convenient plot by Cackle’s sister to take over the school. The cat may or may not learn to balance on a broom by the final page…
