Wittilda lives with her 47 cats and takes care of them. She runs out of food to feed them and doesn’t know how to cook something they’d like. She tries to get a job as a hair stylist but it doesn’t work out. Then she tries to get a job as a pizza deliverer and she gets it because of her fast time. Then she gets pizza to take home and feed her cats. ( )

Wittilda is a witch looking for work and she has over 40 cats to help her. She becomes a pizza delivery person, and uses her broom to fly the fastest deliveries ever!

Wittilda was a witch with a serious problem. Her forty-seven cats - strays and lost kittens always seemed to find their way to her house - needed feeding, and she was down to her last dried rat! What to do...? Get a job, of course! But when her first day working at her Aunt Bort's hair salon ended in disaster, Wittilda had to begin her search anew. And then she saw an advertisement for a pizza deliverer, and her mind took a different direction altogether...

Although I wouldn't say that it was one of my favorites, when it comes to the slew of witchy picture-books I've been reading recently, A Job for Wittilda is still an engaging little story, ideally suited for those younger readers looking for gentler Halloween style fare. Wittilda is an appealing heroine, one who puts her feline charges first. The artwork - created using oil paint over acrylics - is colorful and fun. I particularly liked some of the little details - the expressions on the cats' faces, the spider and mouse who follow Wittilda around. All in all, an entertaining tale! ( )

The 47 cats that witch Wittilda has rescued and taken in to her home are down to their last dried rat!

"Every half-starved stray, every unwanted kitten seemed to find its way into Wittilda's heart and kitchen. Wittilda loved them all. But...it was getting hard to feed them."

Wittilda needs to earn some money and quick! She goes job hunting and after failing as a beautician she tries out for a job as a pizza delivery person. The owner of Dingaling's Pizza hands out five pizzas to each of his applicants and tells them that the first person back will get the job. Wittilda has the added edge of piloting a swift broom for speedy deliveries. She whips through the first four deliveries without a hitch except for one customer who pays in pennies and counts them out of a jar one by one. She's in the final stretch and headin' for home when she hears a plaintive little "Mererouw!" It's a little white kitten caught high up in the branches of a tree. The kitty can't get down and just as Wittilda swoops her broom over to rescue the kitten she sees one of her competitors zoom by on his motorcycle in the street below. If she helps the kitten she may not make it back to Dingaling Pizza in time to win the job! You'll have to read this zany book to find out how this funny little witch handles the dilemma.

A Job for Wittilda has been a favorite among my family's children ever since it was published in 1993. My sister actually give it to me as a gag because, well, because it almost sounds like my biography! Wittilda has a few more cats than I do and is a pretend witch instead of Wiccan but you can see how my family would love this opportunity to josh me a little bit about my, as they see it, eccentricities. Written and illustrated by husband-wife team Caralyn and Mark Buehner, this cute book turned out to be lots of fun and quite popular with the nieces and nephews, enjoyed by boys and girls alike.

Amazon.com says that it is intended for Baby through Preschool but I disagree. Its illustrations are filled with details and tongue-in-cheek humor, subtle sight-gags and mysterious little hidden images that peek out of the nooks and crannies of the paintings. I think 5-8 years old is closer to the mark for the readership. There is about a third of a page of text in medium size print on every page facing an illustrated page as well as a few double page spreads with only one line of text. It is not an easy reader, having some big, unfamiliar words for this age group but the story is easy to understand and told in a fashion that keeps the tale moving at a brisk pace.

The story is written with plenty of humor and shows Wittilda to be a kind-hearted, unselfish person who is maybe just a little befuddled. She reminds me of Samantha's Aunt Clara on the old TV show Bewitched. She's short and plump with straight black hair cut with bangs. She has a big round nose with the customary wart. She wears a black dress, cape and tall pointy hat, big cat-eye glasses and red sneakers with bobby socks. She's adorable.

The illustrations created using oil paints over acrylics are fun for children and adult readers alike and engage children easily, encouraging them to look closely for all the humorous antics of the cats and other details of Wittilda's busy world. The illustration that shows the inside of Wittilda's living room shows a cat sliding down the banister, a Venus fly-trap plant on the window sill, a cat exercising its claws against the arm of an over-stuffed chair, another cat half-way in the fish bowl with a pop-eyed fish, cats watching television, cats napping, cats scrapping and one more needy cat waiting at the front door to be admitted. Wittilda has her hair up in curlers and is wearing pink bedroom slippers that look like rats. The expressions on their faces are priceless. A mounted salmon above the door is shown as a salmon skeleton in another picture. These cats are HUNGRY! Every page has lots of colorful details like these. The scenes of Wittilda delivering her pizzas are very funny and are set against a pretty star-sprinkled sky with a big full moon. Sparkles fly off of the broom as she zooms along with the city lights twinkling below.

A fun added attraction to this book is a separate little drama between a mouse and a black cat. In the far corners of the pages that feature only text there is a tiny black cat and a tiny black mouse. The cat is only about a half an inch tall and the mouse is much smaller. They are like silhouettes. They start out on page one in opposite corners. Each subsequent page shows the cat stealthily getting closer to the mouse until it looks like the mouse leaps to the next page with the cat bounding after him. The mouse runs up to the top corner on the next page. The cat disappears for a couple of pages only to re-appear face-to-face, right next to the mouse. This tiny little side-story continues on throughout the book and has a surprise ending, too.

I love Wittilda and I think most children will love her, too. This book is not specifically a Halloween story but is of course a grand choice for Halloween reading because its star character is a witch. ( )