Bed-Knobs and Broomsticks (Book Review)

 

Back in the autumn, something made wonder if I ever read this book or not, so I downloaded it for Kindle. Read it today, and I'm still not sure. I see there's also a Disney movie based on it, from 1971, but that seems to differ quite a bit from the books, and includes animated scenes, and I'm pretty sure I never saw that.

Anyway, I've read it now. It's actually two books: The Magic Bed-Knob (1945) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947).  

The Magic Bed-Knob

"Once upon a time there were three children and their names were Carey, Charles and Paul. Carey was about your age, Charles a little younger, and Paul was only six. One summer they were sent to Bedfordshire to stay with an aunt..."

A neighbour of their aunt is a Miss Price. One day she falls off her bicycle and hurts her ankle - or so it is said. Paul, however, claims to have seen her falling off a garden broomstick... The children bring her some food from their aunt, and get to know her a bit better. As Paul has been watching her fly the broomstick, she confesses that she's studying to be a witch, but says she's not really much good at it yet. The children kind of blackmail her into a deal: They won't tell anyone, if she can give them some kind of bewitched item.

Paul happens to have a loose bedknob from his bed in his pocket. Miss Price says she can put a spell on that, which will make his bed able to travel: "If you twist it one way, the bed will take you where you want, in the present. Twist it the other way, and the bed will take you back into the past."

The children decide to give it a try in the present, but disagree on where to go. Since it's Paul's bedknob, he makes the decision, though (it is only for him that the magic works - he has to be the one to twist the knob). And he just wants to go back home to London, so that's where they end up first... Which turns out to be troublesome enough, with the bed landing on the street outside their house (with no one at home)...

Eventually they manage to get back to Bedfordshire, though. They consult with Miss Price, and she agrees to come with them on their next outing with the bed - this time to a South Sea island, which, according to an encyclopaedia they consult, is supposed to be uninhabited. The encyclopaedia turns out to be wrong about that, though, which means they land in another unforeseen and rather scary adventure...

Without revealing the details of that, they manage to get out of that situation as well, and back to their aunt's - but in an awful mess, and with the bed soaked in water, which they have a hard time trying to explain to their aunt; who by now is very annoyed with them, and decides their stay with her is over. They manage to keep Miss Price out of it, though (but their aunt probably wouldn't have believed them, anyway!)

Bonfires and Broomsticks

At the opening of the second book, a couple of years have passed. The children are again going to be sent away for a vacation, and this happens to coincide with them finding a newspaper ad put in by no other than Miss Price, declaring herself willing to lodge a couple of children for a while. She agrees to take these children whom she already knows. When they get there, she declares that she's given up magic - but she is now in possession of the bed from their aunt's house (I forget why, but that had been sold in the meantime, and the aunt moved away I think), and Paul still has the magic bedknob... And this time, rather than travelling in the present, the children end up travelling into the Past, to the year 1666, just before the Great Fire of London. And from there they bring back with them a nervous necromancer, who is really only pretending to be able to do magic. He spends a bit of time with them in their own time (something which made me think of the British TV series Catweazle, which I enjoyed back in the 1970s) but Miss Price decides he has to be taken back to his own time again: "I don't really like to mention it, but there's no getting away from the fact that, as far as we're concerned, Mr Jones is long since dead and buried."

But back in he 1660s, of course, new problems arise, as back then, people believed to be practising witchcraft were also being persecuted. "If he sank and died there in the water, it showed he was a human man and innocent of magic, but if he lived, that was a sign that he lived by supernatural powers, and they would burn him at the stake."

How they all got out of that last adventure, I will not reveal - but I found the whole book quite entertaining, in a nonsensical way... :)

- - -

Mary Norton (1903-1992), English writer of children's books, is probably better known for The Borrowers series (1952 to 1961 + 1982) - about tiny people living secretly (like under your floor or behind your walls) in the midst of contemporary human civilisation. That's one of my favourite children's books/series, ever since my childhood. I have the first four in Swedish from the 1960s, and have also reread them all in English in later years (including the last book, written 20 years after the original series).