The Marvelous Magic of Miss Mabel

Gr 4–7—Mabel Ratcliff, the witchy great-great-grandmother of Cat (The Courage of Cat Campbell), stars in her own book about resourcefulness and feminism. It's 1881, and Nora Ratcliff, a widow, finds baby Mabel in a flowerpot by her door. Nora falls in love with Mabel, only later discovering that Mabel is a witch. Nora enrolls Mabel in Ruthersfield Academy, a magical school where her innovative spells challenge her teachers' unshakable adherence to rules and traditions. Mabel argues that girls should ride broomsticks astride for safety and brainstorms magical solutions to everyday problems like her housemaid's brittle hair. When the Society of Forward Thinking Witches sponsors a competition for a useful household spell, Mabel's clever idea and the machinations of her archenemy Winnifred make for a disastrous magical muddle that Mabel must unravel. Lowe taps into relevant themes for today's youth with her characterization of Mabel as an inventor and an agent of social change. Through Mabel's trials and errors, Lowe subtly impresses upon readers the ideas that trying and failing can lead to genius and that one should never abandon one's convictions because of others' opinions. Through the lens of the suffrage movement, Lowe also examines the so-called proper roles of women. The subplot involving the restrictive Nanny Grimshaw seems extraneous to the story, further delineating Mabel as a figure of pity and oppression. The historical setting may narrow the audience slightly, but Mabel's high jinks will appeal to readers of Roald Dahl's Matilda and Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle.