The Worst Witch Saves the Day- Book Summary
Plot Summary
The Worst Witch Saves the Day is the fifth book in the popular children’s book series written by Jill Murphy. Published in 2005, the book continues the adventures of Mildred Hubble, a young witch who struggles with her magical abilities and often finds herself in trouble at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches.
In this book, Mildred and her classmates are preparing for the end-of-term exams. Mildred is determined to do well and show everyone that she is a capable witch, but she is still struggling with her magic and feels like she is always getting things wrong.
To make matters worse, a mysterious new teacher named Miss Granite arrives at the academy. Miss Granite is tough and demanding, and she seems to have it out for Mildred. Mildred is convinced that Miss Granite is determined to make her fail the exams and get expelled from the academy.
But when Mildred discovers that Miss Granite is actually an imposter who is trying to steal the academy’s magical powers, she knows she must act quickly to save the school. With the help of her friends, Mildred sets out to expose the imposter and save Miss Cackle’s Academy.
Mildred and her friends must use their magic and their wits to uncover the truth and stop the imposter from carrying out her evil plan. They work together and prove that even the worst witch can be a hero.
Summary
The story begins with Mildred Hubble returning to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches on the first day of her third year (winter term). This is the first time in two years, that Mildred feels happy coming to the school. She also felt more confident, as during her summer break, Mildred took a special broomstick crash course. However, her cat, Tabby hasn’t improved at all. Soon after landing on the school premises, Mildred starts looking for her friends. Soon she finds one of her friends, Maud Spellbody, whose hair is suddenly curly instead of the usual straight ones. Maud tells Mildred that she borrowed a hairstyling brush from her aunt that works like magic and asks Mildred to try it sometime. As Enid lands by the wall, the girls head to the assembly to see who is going to teach them this year.
In the second chapter, the girls are filled with utter joy to hear that their Form Three will have a new teacher this year named Miss Granite. Miss Cackle hired the new form teacher after Miss Gribble failed to show discipline and was against Miss Hardbroom's advice. Miss Granite is described as a strange-looking woman having a huge cloud of orange curls and also wearing thick wool socks and hobnailed boots along with enormous purple-tinted glasses and a short cape with a collar turned up so high that you couldn't see her full face. She speaks in a very high-frequency, screeching voice that shocks everyone in the school.
In the third chapter, after unpacking, Mildred tries to straighten out her pigtails by using Maud's hair styling brush. Shortly Maud and Enid went to Mildred’s room to help her with styling her hair. However, they were horrified to see Mildred with her hair tangled up with the brush in a huge mess. Soon Ethel comes in and volunteers to help. However, her helping out Mildred meant taking a pair of scissors and cutting off both the styling brush and the messy hair.
After a few boring lessons with weird Miss Granite, Ethel offers to help Mildred once again regarding her hair predicament. She prepares a potion and claims that it will restore Mildred's hair to its original rightful length. Poor Mildred, with no other option left, applies the potion at night, and just when she is about to fall asleep, her hair starts growing longer and longer by the minute, flooding the whole school. Soon Miss Hardbroom comes to investigate the matter and states that Mildred is just having a bad hair day. Miss Hardbroom manages to stop Mildred’s hair from growing any further, cuts it to its rightful length, and vaporizes the swathes of hair that engulfed the entire school.
During a broomstick flying lesson, Ethel steals Tabby (who is having a nervous breakdown as a result of the hair incident) and hides him on the roof in front of Miss Granite's study window.
Later at night, while trying to recover Tabby from the roof, Mildred gets locked up in a cupboard by someone who looks like Miss Cackle. However, she is actually Miss Cackle's identical twin sister Agatha Cackle, who sneaked into the school disguised as Miss Granite. Agatha conspires to turn all the teachers and pupils of the academy into snails. In order to escape from the cupboard, Mildred turns herself into an ant, sneaks out, and goes to Maud's room, where she tries to wake her up but fails. Later on, she succeeds in attracting Maud and Enid's attention by using ink blots to write two notes – 'HELP NOT ANT' and 'FORGOT SPEL' clarifying her dilemma. With the help of Maud and Enid, Ant-Mildred turns back into a human. Mildred tells them everything that is going on. Just as Agatha attempts to turn Miss Cackle into a snail, Mildred brilliantly turns Agatha into a snail instead. Later Mildred and her friends run into Miss Hardbroom, who had been away all this while.
Later, Miss Hardbroom suggests that Miss Cackle should pose as Agatha and invites Agatha's rebellious coven into the academy, whereupon Mildred and the others will turn them all into snails. Their plan succeeds. As Mildred, Maud, and Enid go back to bed, they realize how much they miss Miss Hardbroom as their form teacher. Suddenly, Miss Hardbroom shows up and acts cordial with them for a brief moment, admitting that she too has missed them, before sternly telling them to get back to bed with no candles on.
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