Which Witch? and the Anne Spencer Lindbergh Prize
by Michael Levy

In early 2001 something odd happened in the world of children’s literature. The prestigious Anne Spencer Lindbergh Prize for the best children’s fantasy of the 1999–2000 biennium was awarded to a book by a British author who wasn’t named Rowling, Pullman, or Almond. Rather, the award went to Which Witch? (Dutton, 1999) by Eva Ibbotson, a veteran writer heretofore little known in the United States.
          The Lindbergh Award judges’ citation for the novel commends the author’s “wildly imaginative characters—witty, warty, and winsome—and a suspenseful plot [which] make this fantasy a pure delight.” The choice was particularly unusual, although not undeserving, because Which Witch? is not a new book. Although it first appeared in the United States in 1999, it was originally published in Great Britain some twenty years earlier. Ibbotson is the author of many children’s books, the first of which to receive United States publication, The Secret of Platform 13 (Dutton, 1998), was named a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She is also the author of the fantasies The Great Ghost Rescue (Walck, 1975) and The Haunting of Hiram, neither of which has seen U.S. publication, and the just-released Island of the Aunts (Dutton, 2000), as well as a number of YA historical novels. Although Ibbotson has a strong reputation in Great Britain, her recent publication in the United States may be seen, at least in part, as a result of the current popularity of YA fantasy brought about by the overwhelming success of the Harry Potter books.
          Which Witch? is set in contemporary northern England, albeit an England wherein witches and wizards are common place. It centers on Arriman Canker, better known as Arriman the Awful, Loather of Light and Wizard of the North. Not bad hearted as wizards go, Arriman is a handsome fellow who spends his time “blighting and smiting, blasting and wuthering, and doing everything he [can] to keep darkness and sorcery alive in the land.” Rarely hurting others and a little shy of women, he spends most of his time at Darkington Hall, a “gray gloomy, sprawling building about thirty miles from [the town of] Todcaster,” and devotes himself to improving the property by “filling his battlements with screech owls and his cellars with salamanders,” setting up a “private zoo in which he kept all the nastiest and ugliest animals he could find,” and turning his billiard room into a laboratory full of appalling smells. Arriman, needing some company, shares his accommodations with a sixteenth-century ghost who murdered all seven of his wives, and two servants, a one-eyed ogre named Lester, whose previous employment was as a sword swallower, and the kind-hearted Mr. Leadbetter, who seems to be completely human, except, that is, for his small, discrete tail.
          Eventually, as is often the case when one masters one’s trade and gets one’s dwelling set up exactly as one wishes, Arriman grows terribly bored. When he announces to Lester that he may go away somewhere, “take a little room in some pretty market town perhaps and write a book,” the ogre is shocked and responds, “But what would happen to blackness and evil, sir?” Eventually, after exploring other alternatives, Arriman decides to take a wife. Since he is a wizard, of course, his wife must be a witch and he decides to have a contest among the various witches of nearby Todcaster.
          Unfortunately, the witches there are sorry lot. They’re ugly for the most part, but that’s only to be expected of witches. More to the point, most of them are petty, stupid, and not particularly competent. Their spells tend to go wrong. The Shouter sisters argue all day about nothing and the oldest of the bunch, Mother Bloodwort, is given to changing herself into a coffee table when under stress. Perhaps the least competent of the witches of Todcaster is Belladonna. Yes, she’s young and pretty, but, try as she might, she can’t work black magic to save her soul. A white witch despite herself, she suffers constant humiliation: “Flowers sprang up where she walked, bursts of glorious music fell from the air, and when she smiled, old gentlemen remembered the Christmases they had had when they were children.” When Belladonna tries to turn an old typewriter into a nest of adders, she gets flowers instead. The one witch in town with any sort of true skill in the black arts is the enchantress Madame Olympia. Having recently moved to Todcaster specifically to compete in Arriman’s contest, Madame Olympia is a frightening woman, “very tall, with black hair piled high on her head. She had long bloodred fingernails and round her shoulders she wore a cape of puppy skin. Her fingers and wrists sparkled with jewels, but the necklace wound round her throat was, unexpectedly, not of pearls or diamonds, but of human teeth.” Madame Olympia plans to win the contest, marry Arriman, and then, perhaps, find ways to add to her string of teeth….
          Comparisons between Ibbotson’s work and that of J. K. Rowling are not entirely unfair, nor do they necessarily work to Ibbotson’s detriment. Which Witch? is a genuinely funny book and exactly the sort of thing likely to appeal to fans of Harry Potter. Each of Ibbotson’s broadly drawn characters is an individual with her own dreams and eccentricities. The Shouter twins with their constant bickering over whose chicken/familiar is whose; Ethel Feedbag and her ordure-covered Wellingtons; Mother Bloodwort, whether in human or coffee table form, are at once annoying and endearing; and Belladonna, who truly would like to be wicked but simply doesn’t have it in her, is a perfectly lovely heroine. The great, but slightly eccentric wizard Arriman might well be played by Rex Harrison at his most regal and Madame Olympia, well, imagine Glenn Close in the role, working off of her recent turn in Disney’s 101 Dalmations.
          Ibbotson also has a genius for picking just the right, slightly skewed detail. One of Belladonna’s many un-witchlike acts of kindness involves the rescue of a small boy named Terrence Mugg from an orphanage. Terrence’s only friend is an earthworm named Rover, who turns out to be a talented familiar. Another witch, Mabel Wrack, attempts as her entry in the contest to raise a Kraken, but ends up with a baby of the species, who has to be put in nappies. Madame Olympia, the only witch with a true talent for evil, creates as her entry a horrific “Symphony of Death,” the only really scary part of the novel, which involves thousands of gigantic rats that devour each other until the one survivor ends the event by eating itself. In short, Which Witch? is a delightfully funny book with just a bit of darkness to it and an entirely appropriate winner of the third Anne Spencer Lindbergh Award.
          In choosing to honor Which Witch?, the judges emphasized that “the prize continues Anne Spencer Lindbergh’s literary tradition of placing ordinary beings in extraordinary situations, which then play out in amusing and telling ways. In conferring this award, friends and colleagues join together to celebrate Lindbergh’s life and art, and the grace and wit she epitomized in both, as well as to reward and encourage the best in fantasy writing for children.” Lindbergh, of course, is the daughter of Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and the award that honors her is an outgrowth of their philanthropic interests.
          The Charles A. Lindbergh Fund was created in 1977, three years after the great aviator’s death and on the fiftieth anniversary of his landmark flight from New York to Paris, in recognition of Lindbergh’s “vision of a balance between technological advancement and environmental preservation.” In 1994, it was renamed the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation to honor both the aviator and his wife, a noted author in her own right, and to recognize “that she and her husband shared the vision of this balance in the devoted partnership they formed in pioneering aviation, exploration, conservation, writing, and philosophy.” Founded by friends of the Lindberghs from New York City’s Explorers Club, it was originally led by General James H. Doolittle and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
          Today, the foundation administers a number of awards and grants. In 2001, for example, the Lindbergh Award was given to Robert Ballard, the founder and president of the Institute for Exploration, which specializes in underwater archaeology. Ballard is best known for discovering the Titanic but has made other important discoveries as well, including, in the last year, a series of startlingly well-preserved and archaeologically significant shipwrecks at the bottom of the Black Sea. He has also created The Jason Foundation for Education, an organization whose role is “to excite and engage students in science and technology.” Lindbergh grants are to be awarded to scientists working on ways to balance technological innovation with good environmental practice and tend to go to projects with such titles as “Balancing the Preservation of Unique Cactus with Urbanization and Tourism in the Caribbean.”
          Such awards and grants are all very well, you might think, but how did the Lindbergh Foundation become involved with literature and why in particular is this article appearing in The Five Owls? Well, that’s where Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her children come in.
          Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s early fame also grew out of her love of flying. In such books as North to the Orient (Harcourt, Brace, 1935) and Listen! The Wind (Harcourt, Brace, 1938) she recounted in stirring fashion two of the long flights she made with her husband. Her writing, she said, also helped her find peace after the tragic 1932 kidnapping and murder of her first child. The Lindbergh’s went through more bad times just before World War II, due in part to Charles’s isolationist politics. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s writing eventually helped her regain public favor, however, as she published a series of much-beloved books, most notably her masterpiece Gift from the Sea (Pantheon, 1955). In these works and in her diaries and letters, which appeared in the 1970s and ’80s, Lindbergh explored such themes as the importance of spiritual fulfillment, marriage, family, and concern for others. She also found time to actually take part in a successful, if difficult, marriage and raise five more children.
          Two of those children, Reeve and Anne, went on to have successful careers in children’s literature; and it is the latter, who died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 53, that the Anne Spencer Lindbergh Prize was founded to honor. Among her best-known children’s books are Nick of Time (Little, Brown, 1994), The People in Pineapple Place (Harcourt, Brace, 1982), and The Worry Week (Harcourt, Brace, 1985). Most of her work is fantasy, and the prize founded in her name “offers a $5,000 award to the author whose children’s fantasy novel is judged to be the best published in the English language over a two-year period.” The prize judges may also, at their discretion, name one or more Honor Books, with each receiving $1,000. The Lindbergh Prize has an excellent track record. Their choice for the outstanding fantasy novel published in 1995–96 went to Joan Aiken’s Cold Shoulder Road (Delacorte, 1995), with Sherwood Smith’s Wren’s War (Jane Yolen Books, 1995) and Caroline B. Cooney’s Out of Time (Delacorte, 2001) designated as Honor Books. For 1997–98 the award went to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Levine, 1998) with Franny Billingsley’s Well Wished (Atheneum, 1997) chosen as an Honor Book.

Michael Levy teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. He’s written numerous articles on  science fiction and children’s literature.