Winnie the Witch gets an emergency call from the mayor of Ipsilwhich at four o'clock one Halloween morning, pleading for her help in dealing with the ghost who had invaded his home. Jumping on to her electric broom with her cat Lucifer, Winnie is soon on the scene, and despite the ghost's fear of witches, manages to figure out what the spooky visitor wants. It turns out that he is the ghost of an old miner, who wants to lead the mayor to his hidden gold, so that a playground can be built for the children of Ipsilwhich. All ends happily, as the mayor realizes he shouldn't fear ghosts, and the ghost realizes he shouldn't fear witches...

Published in 1977 by the Chicago-based Society for Visual Education, Winnie the Witch and the Frightened Ghost is (as far as I have been able to discover) the first picture-book to feature this kindly witch. The character debuted earlier in the 1970s, in a series of short filmstrips made by the Society, featuring illustrated stills, text and audio narration. The first of these, simply entitled Winnie the Witch, was written by Richard R. Dolezal and illustrated by Gordon Laite. This film can be found (with Russian over-narration) on youtube, HERE. It introduces Winifred (nicknamed Winnie), a witch who struggles to scare people like other witches, who has a cat named Lucifer, and an electric broom, which she converted from a vacuum cleaner. After this initial film, others followed, written and illustrated by various other authors and artists. According to WorldCat, the filmstrip of Winnie the Witch and the Frightened Ghost was released in 1974, three years before this picture-book, and there was a puppet kit created for the story as well. A number of subsequent filmstrips about Winnie also had accompanying picture-books, and these were billed as Tales of Winnie the Witch. Each of these films and their accompanying books are meant to teach a particular lesson. In Winnie the Witch and the Frightened Ghost, the moral is that one should not fear others because they are different.

As someone who loves witchy picture-books, which are a pet project of mine, I was delighted to discover these films and books, and surprised that I had never heard of them before. Picture-book readers today will be very familiar with another Winnie the Witch, whose adventures have been chronicled by author Valerie Thomas and illustrator Korky Paul in numerous picture-books, and might be surprised (as I was) to discover this earlier character (the Thomas/Paul Winnie debuted in 1987) who was also named Winnie the Witch. However that may be - and I do wish that the filmstrips were more readily available to watch, somewhere! - I found this book engaging. The story is simple, and very sweet. The artwork alternates between black and white and color, and is cute. It isn't an especially easy book to track down, but if one can obtain a copy, I would recommend it to readers who enjoy witchy picture-books. ( )