Wow! This one just about killed me. It’s very sad/a little disturbing and not for everyone probably, but everything about it was excellent: the writing, the psychological insight, the plotting. Reminded me a little of Shirley Jackson. Just masterful.

Still possibly THE scariest book I've ever read.

This was weird, but I liked it for the most part. Jessica is a young girl who is ignored by her mother, Joy. Joy had Jessica when she was a kid herself and now likes to pretend that there is no Jessica. Joy dates a lot and leaves Jessica by herself. Jessica is a strange kid. She is antisocial, but used to have a best friend who lived in her building who now has nothing to do with her. You don't discover why Brandon deserted her until almost the end.

At the very beginning, Jessica discovers an odd, premature kitten in a cave that she and Brandon used to play in. The kitten is blind, with little fur and very ugly. Jessica takes the kitten home and tries to lob it off on the cat lady who owns their building, Mrs. Fortune. Mrs. Fortune is very elderly and tells Jessica she is not up to feeding a newborn every two hours, so Jessica takes over its care, but very reluctantly.

Jessica knows neither how to care for people or animals and has a recurring nightmare about being abandoned. A story she writes for school about an abandoned baby is especially chilling. Worm starts to grow up, he gains his eyesight and has very strangely shaped eyes. He looks evil when he hisses, which is quite a lot as Jessica does not know how to take care of him. Worm looks other worldly and seems to have an uncanny influence on Jessica.

Let me just say I did not pick out this book for myself. This book was picked out by my friends mother for me as a birthday gift. Now, I had this book for a couple of years before I actually decided what the Hell, read it. So, I did. Its a short read, and though decent, had faults. The mother still acts like a teenager, and the daughter I believe is extremely insensitive and selfish. Whether or not you agree is a different matter, but if you ask me, she is. Its part of a series, but this book seemed like one seperate book, and did not hook me at all, so I think Ill be done with it unless it becomes another birthday present. I recommend you read this if you want something short, or enjoy big personalities on your characters
--AS

Jessica is a loner. Reclusive and cruel-minded, but with a fantastic imagination. When she adopts a scrawny stray kitten she finds in a cave near her home, that imagination kicks into overdrive. Jessica starts to imagine the cat is talking to her, instructing her to do things... terrible things. And Jessica is seemingly powerless to ignore these commands. Jessica starts to believe the cat, whom she's named Worm, is a witch's cat and that she (Jessica) is under the witch's spell.

Although this is of the Magical Realism genre, I read it as though it was Jessica herself who was the one with the issue. That perhaps she was using the cat as an excuse to act out all the cruel impulses she never had the balls to act upon before. Perhaps she actually DID hear voices, an indicator of an even more serious problem. Either way, this kid is in desperate need of professional help. Do I think Worm was ever anything more than an ordinary cat? No... I do not. Not the most friendly cat in the world. Granted, he was a feral raised by a girl who was cruel and abusive toward him. But still, just an ordinary cat and the unfortunate victim of a cruel and deeply-disturbed owner. It is Jessica who is the evil one in more ways than I care to think about.

A supernaturally-twisted story about mental illness from the point of view of the mentally ill aimed at younger audiences. Readers are privy to Jessica's increasingly-disturbed thought process as her mind spirals more and more into delusions. And it's a disturbing journey that's hard to deal with at times. Not my favorite of the author's, and there ARE some trigger warnings (animal abuse, mainly, but also bullying and mental illness). Still, a good suspenseful read, if you can stomach some of what happens.

p.s. The dream sequence is pretty much the most disturbing nightmare scene I've ever read

I'm not sure how many stars to give this book. The writing is good, the characters are well developed, but the story is quite disturbing. I worry that this book will cause people to be mean to cats like Jessica is to her cat. Although she nurses this cat from an abandoned newborn, she is so mean to it.

I don't like the occult theme of this book either. I find it all so creepy. I didn't like the neighbor playing into Jessica's delusion. Jessica needed to be hospitalized before she really hurt someone.

Creepy, creepy, creepy. Even the cover is creepy - and would make people hate cats.

Joy, Jessica's mother is selfish to the max. I was surprised the counselor didn't figure out the meaning of Jessica's story - the one she felt didn't mean anything.

I am surprised this is a Newberry book, but the writing is good. I don't think I want my students to read it though. I am bothered that she became friends again with Brandon after he was abusive to her. That bothers me as well. I don't want anyone to think it is okay for someone to hit them and they can just forgive and forget. There are too many young girls abused by boyfriends. I don't want them to think this is okay.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder is always good, even though sometimes the language is a little dated. (In this book, Joy, the mom, often refers to her daughter as "Jessie Baby," not, "Jessie, baby, . . .".)

The theme is intense: a girl who gets really in her head and becomes certain that there are supernatural things going on, and not the good kind -- more of the possession, demonic kind. It's well-done, though, and I like Snyder because she doesn't talk down to kids, nor does she shy away from some intense stuff. I loved her books when I was a kid, and I don't remember noticing anything too intense. I'm sure I liked them because they were complicated, and the characters were multi-faceted. Snyder also doesn't try to wrap things up nicely; our main character has a discussion with a school psychologist, and the story she writes on the psychologist's promptings is really interesting, but Snyder doesn't interpret it for us. And although there's usually some sort of "moral to the story," it's never heavy-handed and is a byproduct of the good literature (as opposed to a simplistic moral tale posing as literature).

This is not my favorite of Snyder's books, but even though I didn't read it for a long time because the theme was so dark, I really enjoyed it. I love well-written books that you can read really quickly, and I've never outgrown my fondness for good children's and YA literature.

This is one of my favorite creepy books. I read it years ago as a child and it has stuck with me. I re-read it this past weekend to see if it holds up, and it really does. Still just as creepy.

12 August 2014 Upon finishing: I think this book has gotten mixed up with another in my memories, because, wow, I did not remember that! It finishes well and she doesn't minimize what is going on with and for Jessica. But dark - wow this is dark, down to its marrow. I think every one of us needs a Mrs. Fortune at some point in our lives - she was a wonderful lady. And an interesting flip on the stories of Salem and the witch trials.

11 August 2014 on page 95 of 183 of The Witches of Worm: don't know if it's having cats now (not prev'sly hvg livd in close proximity to felines) +/or being considerably older but this time around this feels considerably darkr in terms of characters/families + much less magical. when I read this as a kid, I found it scary but in a magical way somehow. This time I mostly feel really sad for our main charac + hopeful some1 will c past her attempt to cover feeling + self

orig read 1990ish

A difficult read, not, obviously, because of the reading level, but because of the relentless darkness of it. I don't know what was going on the 1970s that made all the kids' books ridiculously grim and miserable. All the lead in the air back then, perhaps. It is difficult to spend a whole book in the head of the unpleasant protagonist Jessica, bristling with a fear of abandonment turned to rage so deep that not only does she start hearing voices but the world itself, in Gothic environmental sympathy, constantly roils between vicious storms and simply simmering bleak greyness.

But luckily, unlike Bridge to Terebithia or suchlike stupid-depressing 70s kids' books, the ending is genuinely redemptive. My strongest memory of reading it as a kid is the instant, no-discussion-necessary reunion between Jessica and her estranged best friend Brandon, when Jessica is in need at the end of the book. It was just as moving this time around. And I also found the ending satisfying on a very different level as an adult. As a kid, I think, I just sort of assumed that, like almost all stories of magic in the real world, it had the disappointing "it was just your imagination after all" ending. But on rereading it's more interesting than that. Jessica gets into trouble because of a certain kind of magical thinking; Mrs. Fortune's prescription for getting her out uses the same means. And Brandon too is a proponent of rituals and magic, and suggests that the problem is not "irrationality", but balance. And that is very heartening indeed.

I picked this up because I loved The Egypt Game as a kid, I haven't read anything else by Zilpha Keatley Snyder and I have thing for 1970s Newbery Honor books. The main character shares my name (how very 1970s) and the central storyline is about an ugly, evil cat she sort of accidentally adopts. In a very childish way, this made me really connect with Jessica, as I also have a sort of ugly, definitely evil cat who I occasionally resent and despise and I'm pretty certain he's got a demonic possession, too. I hope my cat does not read Goodreads. He will certainly murder me in my sleep.

This book also garners a mention for its breezy portrayal of a negligent, attractive, single divorcee of a mom. It is very 1970s, how she calls Jessica "Jessie Baby," how she leaves the TV dinners for her, doesn't listen when her daughter talks, dates a series of guys who don't want to be fathers to her daughter, introduces her kid as "my daughter, believe it or not," etc.

In any case, the reason I'm rushing to write about this book mere moments after I finished it is this: I was so profoundly touched by how seriously dark and scary this book is. The main characters are like, 12? and usually kids appreciate books with characters a few years older than them, right? so we're talking about 8-10 year olds as the target audience here. This book is about Worm, a witch's cat who tells Jessica to do horrible things, like ruin her mother's clothing, frighten old ladies with lies about men breaking into their houses and punish a "witch" by setting her house on fire. But then it turns out that the real demons are inside you. And all the evilness was actually coming from Jessica all along. I mean, I know kids can handle some dark shit, but planning to set your neighbor's apartment on fire while she's napping is more We Need to Talk about Kevin than Newbery in my estimation. Also? There is a scene where Jessica tries to exorcise her cat. And in general, she is really mean and fairly abusive toward the cat, who she blames for her behavior. It's OK to blame an imaginary friend for things, but if you are 12 and you are blaming a live animal, going so far as to lock him in a closet to keep him from controlling your mind, well. That is different. And fucked up. And you should know better.

So, I don't know. I enjoyed the book and the weird, witchy outsidery-ness of Jessica, in the same way I appreciated Snyder's outsider kids in the Egypt Game, but I was put out by the treatment of animals and the outright creepiness of a kid who wishes so much harm and suffering on the people around her.

Another one from the Newbery collection. This book was creepy, but not in the way I think the author intended. Though it was well-written, I didn't enjoy it much. The main character, Jessica, is the kind of kid that even I have a hard time connecting with if she shows up in my office. Lacking empathy or any sense of responsibility for her actions even before she convinces herself she's being controlled by her cat, she's unlikeable in just about every way, even though you know she hasn't had an easy life. And when she does learn something at the end, it's such a sudden change it rings false. I just wasn't all that impressed.