The Witches of Worm

The Witches of Worm is about a girl named Jessica who finds a strange, hairless kitten she names Worm. As time goes on, Jessica believes that the cat is possesing her into doing mean things (ex.Washing her her mother's dry-clean dress.) She also thinks that the cat is being possesed by a group of witches, hence the name. Read this book, one of the best I've ever read! Snyder does it again, with a writting style that works thirty years after, while still providing entertainment.

I read this 22 years ago when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, and it scared the hell out of me. I remember being too frightened to even look at the cover (a different one than pictured). For some reason, I pulled this off the shelf at my school library along with a book called "Trillions" which I also have been looking for, and I went nuts over both books. "Witches of Worm" was very creepy, and I believe having read it at that age spoiled me and made me a little less scared of other books and movies. When you're that age, you think what you're reading is really happening! If you give this to your kids, prepare for them to be spooked out of their wits...

You don't have to have a bombshell mother who spends all her free time with her boyfriend or have no friends to dig the sad, bleary-eyed, lonely, supernatural atmosphere of The Witches of Worm. I read this book when I was ten, and for me it's up there with The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, and Jane Eyre for telling it like it is about being a lonely little girl, just strange enough for the neighbors to talk and to know herself that she doesn't fit in. The cat could be possessed, or not; Jessica could be a witch, or not; but the big question for me is, is she really wise beyond her years or does her desolation just make her seem that way? My favorite quote is from this book: "Belief in mysteries, any manner of mysteries, is the only lasting luxury in life."

Worm is a demon cat and he's turning twelve year old Jessica into a witch - or is Jessica the witch turning her cat into a demonic familiar? Or is she simply an unhappy, angry child and Worm nothing more than an ugly stray kitten? The Reader must decide for herself whether anything supernatural is *really* going on in this book. It is certainly disturbing, witchcraft or no there's real doubt if Jessica and Worm will both survive the evil they've fallen under.

I read this book about 15 years ago, when I was a very young man, and the impressions I got from it has never left me. I have devoted my life to the written word (as an editor), and I think that that my love of prose can be directly related to this small, strange novel I read one afternoon in the mid-eighties. Like the greatest of Gothic novels (think "Dracula" or Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey"), this is a novel of the imagination. While the protagonist may be certifiable, she is still extremely recognizable to all readers. While I would highly reccomend this book to young readers, it is adults that will relate, and remember, the alienation of youth. A highly original fantasy, this novel will stick whith anyone, of any age, who picks it up. An underpraised classic of teen literature. It deserves to be embraced by teens and adults of all ages for many years to come.