Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: journeyman witch, flying ointment, Hilary Ezra, Great-uncle Frank, Miss Hazen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A fresh, lively story, skillfully expressed as though by a ten-year-old."
-- Booklist (Booklist ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

Two fifth-grade girls, one of whom is the first black child in a middle-income suburb, play at being apprentice witches. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Aladdin (June 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416948295
• ISBN-13: 978-1416948292
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,017,602 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A late discovery, January 8, 2002

By	J. de Manuel (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (Paperback)

At 33, I would not have been attracted to this book had I not spotted the author's name under the title. Eureka! Another book by the author of "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil Franweiler" which my mother had borrowed from the library for a Children's Literature class she was teaching and which she had to return, overdue, because my sister, 11 years older than me, was enjoying it unbeknownst to us. But I digress.

Elizabeth is short, unglamourous and lonely. She meets an unlikely friend in Jennifer, a mysterious girl who is eerily familiar with Shakespeare and claims to be a witch. They hit it off and Jennifer takes on Elizabeth as her apprentice witch. For Elizabeth, this means eating one unpleasant thing after another and gathering the ingredients for an ointment of flying. Things seem to go terribly wrong until Elizabeth, displaying as much genius as Jennifer, realizes that Jennifer has claimed her as a lifelong friend.

There is much in this book that rings true to the present, and will continue to do so for as long as friendships exist. It reminded me of my own best friend in the fifth grade. He's a guitarist who played in one of the best rock bands from my city, and I got into computers. Our paths were quite different, but when we run into each other, we're still those boys from the fifth grade.

My own kids are still far too young to appreciate this book, but I'm saving it for them.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TREASURE OF WONDERFUL MEMORIES! I STILL LOVE IT!, August 14, 2000

By	BeatleBangs1964 (United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, And Me, Elizabeth (Newbery Honor Book) (Hardcover)

My mother bought me this book for my 8th Christmas and it remains a favorite to this day. In it I found a sympathetic character in Elizabeth, the protagonist of this story. I could well sympathize with her inability to make friends easily (I had that same challenge) and agonizing over her small stature. I had the opposite problem -- I always thought I was abnormally tall until I reached my maximum height at 12 and am NOT tall for any adult!

It was an interesting coming together of these two loners, Elizabeth and Jennifer. I think the whole "witchcraft" thing was to a large extent, childhood wishful thinking and playacting and the natural wish to distinguish oneself among one's peers. I loved this book and delighted in the antics of the two girls.

Elizabeth's nemesis, the phony, duplicitous Cynthia is easily recognizable. I had to endure my share of "Cynthias" growing up and I can remember thinking how laughably clueless adults were to the phony, smarmy charm such creeps like Cynthia oozed. I thought it was mean of Elizabeth's mother to make her attend Cynthia's birthday party and to constantly sing Cynthia's praises to her. People who praise Other People's Children to their own make me tired. That certainly did not help Elizabeth's esteem. I could relate to that because my mother used to sing the praises of other people's children to me. I can remember telling her time and again, "She's/They're just pretending to be nice because YOU'RE here. I can't just walk up to kids and make friends." It was only after I had become an adult myself that I realized that my mother and her peers were not as susceptible to the smarmy Cynthias as I had been led to believe. It was in recent years that she has told me that she knew all along what sneaky, miserable little wretches those "Cynthias" were and that she was "friendly to them in the hopes they'd be nicer to me" whether she was present or not. How wonderful it would have been to have told me that in the first place! I would have known she was an ally then instead of easily misled by other people's children! This book is an eye opener for all ages.

I still laugh uproariously over the way Elizabeth ate a raw onion per Jennifer's direction for a week. Her bizarre eating habits paid off -- I loved it when her onion breath scared nasty Cynthia who ran off the stage during a school play. I also loved the way she fixed Cynthia's wagon at Cynthia's birthday party by challenging her phony charm. Each time Cynthia oohed and aahed over a gift and asked who it was from, Elizabeth would call out the name of the giver, thus spoiling Cynthia's fun. I cheered when Elizabeth stepped on nasty Cynthia's foot when the latter stuck her tongue out at her when she left the party. I remember at 8 thinking, "Elizabeth, you don't need Cynthia. One of these days she'll get it." Many years later, I wanted to say, "Just remember, there is life after elementary/middle school. Creeps like Cynthia may have won a battle or two, but they won't win the war. I hope you see Cynthia fall flat on her phony face."

It is a delightful treasure trove of memories and a book well worth reading at any age. I still love it and I have my original hard back copy that I got when I was eight.

Ideal companion book to MY SECRET BULLY, which is the flip side of this book. Instead of condoning the bullying behavior in aggressive girls, Katie's mother defends her daughter and helps empower her by giving strategies on how to deal with the malicious, destructive behavior of bullying girls.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth Willam,Mekinley and me, Elizabeth, November 16, 2000

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (Paperback)

I recommend this book. Elizabeth was lonely. She has no friends. All the kids go out the back door to school. Some kids go over the hill to school, and some go through the forest to school. Elizabeth goes through the woods. She looked up and saw a girl named Jennifer. Jennifer jumped out of a tree and ran so fast it didn`t look like she touched the ground. Jennifer took a book from the library. It was a spell book. It had ointments that make you fly, and that change you into an animal and that kill people. I liked the part when they told me that one of the girls was a witch. A couple of magical things happen.