The Little Witch

"Once upon a time there was a little witch who was only a hundred and twenty-seven years old." And so begins the delightful story of the Little Witch and her talking pet raven, Abraxas. It's Walpurgis Night, when all the witches of the land meet to dance on Brocken mountain. The Little Witch, who is too small, isn't invited, but she decides to go anyway and is discovered by her evil aunt Rumpumpel. As punishment, the Little Witch's broomstick is burned and she must make the three-day journey back home on foot. Before she leaves, the Head Witch tells her that she may attend Walpurgis Night next year if she promises to become a "good" witch. Unfortunately, Abraxas misunderstands and advises the Little Witch to do good deeds, not realizing that in order to be a "good" witch she must do the opposite. During the year the Little Witch does truly good deeds. When she returns to Brocken Mountain at the next Walpurgis Night, to stand before the Witches's Council, there is a showdown. But it's the Little Witch who has the last laugh.

Otfried Preussler (1923–2013) was born into a family of teachers in Reichenberg, Czechoslovakia, and as a boy loved listening to regional folktales, including the old Sorbian tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice, upon which his bookKrabat and the Sorcerer’s Mill is based. Drafted into the army during World War II, Preussler was captured in 1944 and spent the next five years as a prisoner of war in the Tatar Republic. After his release, he moved to Bavaria and became a primary-school teacher and principal, supplementing his income by working as a reporter for a local newspaper and writing scripts for children’s radio. One of the most popular authors for children in Germany, Preussler was twice awarded the German Children’s Book Prize. His many books have been translated into fifty-five languages and have sold more than fifty million copies. The New York Review Children’s Collection publishedKrabat and the Sorcerer’s Mill in 2014 and The Little Water Sprite andThe Little Witch in Fall 2015, and will publish his most famous children’s book,The Robber Hotzenplotz, and The Little Ghost in Fall 2016.

Anthea Bell is a renowned translator from the German, French, and Danish, and the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize, and, three times over, the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation. She has translated Asterix, Hans Christian Andersen, Cornelia Funke, Kerstin Gier, W. G. Sebald, Sigmund Freud, and several novels by Stefan Zweig, includingConfusion and Journey into the Past, both available as New York Review Books Classics. She lives in the United Kingdom.

Winnie Gebhardt-Gayler (1929–2014) was a German illustrator who was a frequent collaborator with Otfried Preussler.