We discovered this, the first book of a trilogy, a few months ago and now have the full trilogy on the book shelf. Into Opera is transforming this well-known children’s book, Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat by Ursula Moray Williams, into an opera for family audiences. The opera will include an 8-person professional cast and 10-piece chamber orchestra. We are offering hundreds of primary school children the opportunity to participate in developing this brand new opera and to gain a unique insight into the often ‘closed’ process of how an opera is actually created. We aim to offer children a truly immersive introduction to opera, which enables them to explore, challenge, and creatively participate in all elements of what this art form can offer. Children have already started working with: We love a witch story in this family. So we’ve rounded up our seven favourite witch stories for kids. Each of these children’s witch story books is a brilliant read. Gobbolino, The Witch's Cat is a children's novel by Ursula Moray Williams, published by George G. Harrap in 1942 with illustrations by the writer. It has been published with new illustrations more than once and a 70th anniversary edition of the self-illustrated version was published in the Puffin Modern Classics series. [1] It has also been issued in abridged versions, sometimes retitled "Gobbolino the kitchen cat". [2] It's set in a sort of fairy tale land, and Gobbolino can talk to people and do the dishes and so forth, so it's kind of irrelevant that he's even a cat. But at the end, when he loses his magic, he can no longer talk to people. Turns out this was because he was a witch's cat.... so how come all the people who met him didn't realise straight away what he was since normal cats can't talk to humans? Makes no sense.

In 1984 Puffin published The Further Adventures of Gobbolino and the Little Wooden Horse, a joint sequel to Gobbolino and to Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (1938). Ursula Moray Williams (1911-2006) began writing and illustrating books at the age of nine or ten, together with her twin sister. Over the course of a long career, she wrote more than sixty books for children, illustrating many of them herself. She was also a juvenile magistrate. Although his mother Grimalkin and sister Sootica are both witch's cats, Gobbolino longs to be a kitchen cat instead, to be loved rather than feared. Abandoned by his mother and her witch because his "abnormal" white paw and blue eyes makes him unsuitable as a witch's cat, Gobbolino sets off to find a loving home. In a series of adventures, our hero continually finds what appear to be ideal homes, only to be turned out again when his parentage is revealed, or the circumstances of his human companions change.

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For early readers you can also buy editions with multiple stories, in fact there’s a set of ten books you can buy.

Do be prepared for tears, Gobbolino gets into some terrible scrapes before he finally finds a mat he can call home.Here’s a roundup of some of the story books with witches that we’ve read and loved over the last few years. There’s a whole series of Winnie books with nice big colourful illustrations which make them great for reading to two to five year olds. Gobbolino The Witch’s Cat is probably the best known of Ursula Moray Williams’ books, after Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse, published three years earlier. In 2017 a new edition was produced celebrating seventy-five years since its first publication. A gentle story still making children – and cat lovers – smile over 75 years after its first publication.

It’s a thrilling adventure with a cliff hanger at the end of each chapter, but at a deeper level encourages children to think about how brave you might have to be, to be good. We are currently booking tour dates for the opera in 2022. Please get in touch for details: [email protected] The witches are often feisty, go-getters who make strangely brilliant role models for girls, as well as loveable characters.Jill Murphy is brilliant at using really simple language to tell compellingly good stories. This makes these books fun early chapter books to read to four to six year olds. There are ten books in the series, but why not start at the beginning with the original Meg and Mog book. It's an episodic shaggy-dog story, and every chapter follows the exact same plot. Gobbolino was born a witch's kitten, but he is nice and doesn't want to harm anyone, so he wants to be a kitchen cat. He will find some people to live with, and all goes well, until they discover he is a witch's cat and will chase him out and on to the next chapter where the exact same thing will happen with some new people. It is so monotonous, I could barely bring myself to read on, but I wanted to finish it since I knew I enjoyed it as a child.