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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSAfter losing his parents in a car accident, a seven-year-old boy goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother, who knows a frightening secret: real witches are nothing like the ones in fairy tales. They look like ordinary women, wear gloves to hide their claws, wigs to cover their bald heads, and can smell out a child at great distances. When the boy and his grandmother have to spend the summer in a hotel on the English coast instead of Norway, he sneaks into what he thinks is an empty ballroom to train his pet mice, and stumbles into the Annual Meeting of all the witches in England, with the most terrifying witch of all, the Grand High Witch, presiding over a plan to wipe out every child in the country.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Witches
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Witches. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a girl named Birgit slowly grow feathers and become a large white chicken?
✓ Answer
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Birgit Svenson lived just across the road from the narrator's grandmother. Her parents kept her in a pen in the garden, and her mother made omelettes out of the huge brown eggs she laid.
- First half
In what book does a tiny young woman on a platform peel off her own pretty face like a mask?
✓ Answer
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The leader reveals herself in front of her audience by unhooking the mask behind her ears. Underneath is a rotting wizened face that looks pickled in vinegar, with the skin worm-eaten around the mouth.
- First half
In what book does a transformed boy find Bruno chewing a fish-paste sandwich on the Ballroom floor?
✓ Answer
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Bruno barely looks up from his food and refuses at first to believe he is now a mouse. He only accepts the truth when the narrator tells him to look at his own hairy paws.
- Second half
In what book does a guest say "Children should never have baths. It's a dangerous habit."?
✓ Answer
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Grandmamma says this after the boy explains that the bald-headed women very nearly missed smelling him because he had not bathed in ages.
- Second half
In what book does a small cruel woman tell three frogs the seagulls can have them for supper?
✓ Answer
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Peeking under her own bed, the Grand High Witch tells the trembling frogs she will throw them out the window for the seagulls once she goes to bed that night.
- Near the end
In what book does a panicked cook scream that something is running around inside his trousers?
✓ Answer
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Fleeing the stamping boots after a carving knife cuts off the tip of his tail, the mouse scampers up a cook's trouser leg, sending the man jumping and yelling for help while his colleagues roar with laughter.
