Mary Norton1994
by Jon C. Stott
Mary Norton's gift for making the imaginary credible and for then using the imaginary to address deep-felt concerns about the human condition renders her one of the preeminent children's writers of the twentieth century.
Such universal themes as the permanence of memory, the value of stories and storytelling, the significance of children's relationships to adults, the quest for identity in an uncertain world, and the passage from childhood to maturity all find their way into her eight novels for children through a host of disarmingly fanciful characters.
In The Magic Bed-Knob (1943) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947) - the sources of the 1971 motion picture Bedknobs and Broomsticks - a timid apprentice witch provides adventure and imaginative release for two British children waiting out...