Long before Harry Potter arrived at Hogwarts, Mildred Hubble was a delightfully hopeless pupil at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches and Wizards in the very first Worst Witch story. Who cares that she’s the kind of girl who never quite gets the hang of flying and whose spells go just a little bit wrong. Mildred’s blunders have a habit of getting things sorted in a thoroughly unconventional way.
It's the start of a new term at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches and Mildred Hubble is determined not to be the worst witch this year. Everything starts so well. Mildred's class has a new form teacher - no more Miss Hardbroom for Mildred and her friends! But then the new teacher, Miss Granite, starts acting fishy; Mildred has a very bad hair day when a hair growth spell goes wrong and she has to put up with know-it-all Ethel Hallow being 'helpful'. To top it all, her beloved cat Tabby is having a nervous breakdown and refuses to fly.
Jill Murphy was born in London in 1949. From a very early age she was drawing and writing stories, and was already putting books together (literally, with a stapler) by the time she was six. She went on to study at Chelsea, Croydon and Camberwell Schools of Art. Jill worked in a children’s home for four years and as a nanny for a year, before becoming a freelance writer and illustrator. The Worst Witch stories, of which this is the first, are some of Puffin’s most outstandingly successful titles. Jill lives in London with her son, Charlie.
