Just Finished Reading The Witches by Roald Dahl

The Witches, which I just finished reading and discovered was made into a movie last year starring Anne Hathaway, is my sixth Roald Dahl book (all for children), published in 1983.  A boy stays with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents are both killed in an accident...she wastes little time in enlightening and warning him about the danger of witches in the world.  They all hate children and have as their main goal in life making as many "disappear" as possible, through different applications of their dark magic...often turning them into different animals.  They all go in disguises to blend in with the rest of the population...you can tell witches by their wearing gloves at all times (to cover the claws they have on their fingers), wearing itchy wigs (to cover their baldness), and a slight limp in their walk (none of them have toes), to mention some of the more striking clues.  They can stiff out a child from great distances...the cleaner the kid, the worse they smell to the witches.  After staying with his grandmother, the news arrives that the boy's father had willed that she be his legal custodian...but that he would go back to England where they had lived before the accident and finish his education there.  Well, you just know that the boy will encounter the witches, and the author doesn't disappoint...I'll just leave what happens at that so that I don't spoil the ending.  My reaction to the story is that it can make kids really, really scared of strangers and put into their little minds the notion that people at-large are out to get them: I believe children should be trained to be cautious around strangers but not like this.  But if you're setting out to tell a scary story in this genre, then I guess if you're successful you're going to end up with a lot of frightened children.  And I think of all the over-the-top, gruesome fairy tales I heard and read when I was young.  I thought The Witches was interesting reading, but it probably ticked off a lot of people...especially, I imagine, many in the Pagan movement...