Wendy Dickson

As the title here suggests, Wilfrieda the Witch comes to the aid of that holiday gift-giver Santa in this picture-book from the Shetland Islands. Residing on the island of Unst, where Santa makes his sleigh ready for his annual pilgrimage, Wilfrieda notices one Christmas Eve that the old man and his reindeer have not appeared in the sky. Going to investigate, she discovers that he is having trouble, and enlists her giant friend Herma to help him get a start on his flight. Even then, trouble persists, and Wilfrieda must restore some lost packages. All ends happily, of course, and Wilfrieda and her friends have a happy Christmas...

Published in 2012 by The Shetland Times, Wilfrieda the Witch Helps Santa is the first children's book I have read from those northern Scottish islands, with their mixture of Scottish and Norse cultural heritage. I initially tracked it down because of the witchy interest - witchy picture-books are a project of mine - but in the end, the specifically Shetland cultural details were the main appeal of the story, rather than the witchy heroine. I liked the fact that Santa's reindeer had names like Ragnar, Rognvald and Rasmie, and I appreciated the description of Wilfrieda's unusual mechanized broom. That said, while the story idea here was interesting, I found the text itself mediocre, and the artwork from illustrator Samantha Dennis unappealing. It wasn't simply that it looked flat and computer-generated, it also frequently didn't match the narrative. This was particularly true in the depiction of Wilfrieda's broom, which was a disappointment. I'm not sorry to have tracked this one down, given my interest in both witchy tales and the Shetland Islands, but I don't know that I'd strongly recommend it either.… (mais)