Roald Dahl's The Witches

I reread The Witches because I thought it was on The List.  It's not.  I need to start double checking before I do this now because this is the third time in a month this has happened.  Oops.  But it's still an awesome book, and while like every other Dahl book it doesn't paint a nice picture for children, it doesn't set out to scare them either.  It creates a problem and the kid (or in this case, the kid-mouse) solves it. 

Anway, here's where my reading of Dahl's Boy could potentially come in handy for a quick connection between this novel and his early life.  But why use that when a story from my own life, in my obviously unbiased opinion, would be so more entertaining?  Well, at least for me and maybe my Mom.

In 1990, this novel was made into a movie.  At the time, I was 3 years old and had no knowledge of said movie.  When I was about 5, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a woman looking at me through my window.  She then proceeded to take off her face.  Was I hallucinating?  I sure as hell hope so.  But it was enough to scare the bajeezus out of me. 

Anyway, flashforward a few years to me channel surfing and while passing a standard kids' channel, I happened to catch a glimpse of that same lady who was outside my window that night.  And she was taking her face off.  Despite being a few years older, the sight of that is still fairly unsettling, but I toughed it out and waited to see what this movie was.  Then I did what any sensible nerd would do: I found the book it was based on and read it.  Yay!

Sidenote: I just realized that the main witch in the movie is played by Anjelica Huston, which possibly explains the slight nervousness I experience whenever I watch "The Royal Tenenbaums."