"This is Dorrie. She is a witch. A little witch. Her socks never match. Sometimes her shoes are on the wrong feet. Sometimes her hat is wrong-side out. She lives with her black cat, Gink, and her mother, the Big Witch, and Cook." And so begins Dorrie and the Goblin, the ninth installment of Patricia Coombs' twenty-book series about the little witch and her many misadventures - a series that was one of my reading obsessions, as a young girl. When a red-eyed furry little goblin appears in the laundry basket one day, Dorrie mother, the Big Witch, almost faints, and Cook foretells catastrophe! With a Tea and Magic Show scheduled for that evening, the last thing anyone needs is a destructive goblin in the house, creating mischief at every turn. Dorrie, always eager to help out, offers to mind the goblin, little realizing what she has let herself in for...

It's probably redundant to say so, given how I rave about every title in this series, but Dorrie and the Goblin was always one of my favorites (yes, yes, I know: weren't they all?), and as a messy child myself, I recall finding the goblin's antics absolutely delightful! How unrepentantly bad he was! What a wonderful mess he made, flinging Dorrie's clothing all over the room, writing on her ceiling with crayon! And how utterly charming the illustrations in this one were, perfectly capturing the chaos left in the wake of the goblin's visit! An absolute classic - simply a must for the young reader who loves witchy tales! SOMEBODY! Please bring these books back into print! ( )

Dorrie, the little witch with a crooked hat and socks that don't match, lives in a house with a tower, with her mother the Big Witch, her black cat, Gink, and Cook. They have adventures but everything always ends well, and usually on a cosy, domestic note.