Dorrie and the Witch Doctor by Patricia Coombs

When Dorrie - always suspicious of strange grown-up witches - gets in the way one time too many, and stumbles onto Gloris' plot to cast a terrible spell on the Big Witch and her dinner guests, the visiting Witches of Glumglen, she finds herself a prisoner in the bathroom, as the obnoxious Natter takes her place.

Had Dorrie - the little witch whose stockings were always mismatched, and whose hat was always on crooked - suddenly reformed her ways, and decided to wear matching socks, and to straighten her hat? Of course not! (and thank goodness!) No, the neat little witch who materializes in this twelfth entry in Coombs' series wasn't Dorrie at all, but Natter, a nasty little imp conjured up by the witch Gloris, who appeared one day to take Cook's place. 562-564, courtesy of The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi and She wrote 20 stories about Dorrie and her adventures as a little witch over the next 30 years, ending with Dorrie and the Haunted Schoolhouse in 1992.Ĭoombs has also illustrated for other authors and contributed to Poetry Magazine.įrom: Major Authors and Illustrators, pp. The book was highly praised by the New York Times Book Review, and Coombs went on to create the 'Dorrie the Little Witch' series. In 1962, Coombs wrote and illustrated Dorrie's Magic, inspired by her two daughters and their Siamese cat named Dingbat. She also studied poetry at New York University. She attended DePauw University, Michigan State University, and received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Washington. She was always reading books and would hide in unusual places to avoid getting caught reading instead of playing. Patricia Coombs was born on Jin Los Angeles, California and during her school age years lived in Hawaii, Boston, New York, and San Francisco.

Dorrie and the Witch Doctor by Patricia Coombs