She still has all of them and often takes them with her on school visits to show kids that art can be messy and imperfect.

Murphy developed a love of reading and writing at an early age thanks to her mother, a former librarian who was, in Murphy’s words, “ mad about books.” By the time Murphy was 11 years old, she had written and illustrated more than 90 small, hand-stapled books. The Worst Witch author Jill Murphy has been writing books since she was 6 years old. Over the course of eight books (four of which were published before UK booksellers unpacked their first shipments of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in June 1997), Mildred embarked on a series of misadventures with two steadfast friends fended off sabotage attempts from an elitist rival student who hated her for no readily apparent reason and outwitted an evil witch with a personal grudge against the school’s benevolent headmistress-all while learning the finer points of invisibility spells, magic potions, and broomstick aerodynamics.įorty-seven years after The Worst Witch debuted (there’s no wrong time to celebrate a book), here are a few things you might not know about author-illustrator Jill Murphy and her most famous creation. If the Boy Who Lived had wanted a preview of what awaited him at wizard school, he needn’t have looked any further than Mildred’s exploits at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches. More than two decades before a certain boy wizard ditched his cupboard at 4 Privet Drive for the halls of Hogwarts, readers were introduced to clumsy but sweet-natured Mildred Hubble in the 1974 kidlit classic The Worst Witch.

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy