Front cover of an edition of Winnie's Haunted House.
Winnie's Haunted House (ISBN 0192744062) is a 32-page children's picture book with text by the Australian-born author Valerie Thomas and illustrations by the Zimbabwean-born author Korky Paul. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Oxford University Press in September 2015. It was republished in September 2016 as Winnie and Wilbur: The Haunted House (ISBN 0192748297). It is the sixteenth book in the Winnie and Wilbur picture book series that began with the 1987 publication of Winnie the Witch.
The story's main characters are a witch named Winnie and her big black cat Wilbur. The plot is set in motion when Wilbur accidentally breaks some things in Winnie's house. Not realizing that her cat is to blame for the breakages, Winnie decides that they must be the work of a ghost.
Plot
While Winnie the Witch is taking a nap one afternoon, a bee flies in through the window. Wilbur the cat chases after the bee and jumps to catch it. He misses the bee, falls into a vase and breaks it. The sound of the breaking vase wakes Winnie up. At first, she blames Wilbur for breaking the vase. Since she cannot see the cat, however, because he is hiding under her armchair, Winnie decides that Wilbur cannot be to blame after all.
Winnie also cannot find her glasses, not realizing that they are on top of her head. She thinks that somebody might have taken them. She gets up to look for the glasses. At the same time, Wilbur runs out from under the armchair to hide behind the curtains. The curtains fall down on top of Winnie. She begins to suspect that her house might be haunted.
Looking for a better place to hide, Wilbur runs upstairs and jumps onto a chandelier. The chandelier falls from the ceiling, Wilbur being able to jump off the chandelier and onto a banister just in time.
Winnie is now convinced that her house is haunted. She goes to get her big book of spells to look for a spell to fix a haunted house. Although she is not able to read very well, since Winnie is not wearing her glasses, Winnie finds what she thinks is the right spell. She performs some actions, waves her magic wand and says the magic word "Abracadabra". Suddenly, owls, bats, huge spider webs and big hairy spiders, ghosts and skeletons appear. Winnie's house, which had not been haunted before, has become haunted for real.
Realizing that she has made a mistake, Winnie looks at her book of spells again. A passing owl knocks Winnie's glasses onto her nose. She then sees that the spell she cast before was headed "How to make a haunted house". The spell underneath it, "How to fix a haunted house", tells her that she should cast the spell that she cast to make the haunted house in reverse. She performs opposite actions to the ones she performed before and says the word "Abracadabra" backwards. The ghosts and other creatures disappear. Winnie casts another spell to repair her vase, curtains and chandelier.
Winnie goes back to her armchair to take another nap. She realizes that she still does not know what caused the damage in her house. Wilbur hopes that she never finds out.
See also
- Big Pumpkin
- Georgie
- The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything
- The Night Before Halloween
- Room on the Broom
- Scary, Scary Halloween
External links
- Winnie and Wilbur: The Haunted House on the official Oxford University Press international website.
- There is an article about Winnie's Haunted house on the Halloween Wiki.
