Seven-year-old Jenny loved her witchy companion, Eba, who had arrived almost eight years before for a visit, and then, forgetting the spell necessary for flight, had never left. Absent-minded but kind, Eba was held in high regard by Jenny's entire extended family, and was, together with her cat Buckingham, the young girl's favorite friend. When a letter arrived informing her that she was about to lose her position as president of the Cousinhood of Witches, due to her long absence, and that she must at all costs present herself at this year's Witch's Convention, Jenny decided that something had to be done, in order to help her to remember how to fly. But what could one little girl do to help, especially with Eba's envious cousin Grundel, hoping to take over as president of the Cousinhood herself, interfering in order to sabotage her rival? Fortunately, Jenny had some help, in the form of her grandfather, the bumbling adventurer Mr. Peabody and Eba's hard-of-hearing Cousin Meeble...

Published in 1965 and long out-of-print, Eba the Absent-Minded Witch is a book I would most likely never have stumbled across, were I not constantly on the hunt for new titles to include in my ongoing "witchy-witches" project. Although I usually seek out picture-books and early readers - the illustrative element of these titles is as important to me as the textual ones - the brevity of Elizabeth Hull Froman's tale (the book is mere 64 pages) led me to suppose that it was some kind of profusely illustrated chapter-book, and I requested it through interlibrary loan. As it happens, although the artwork from Dorothy Maas, in the form of rather intricate line drawings, has a certain quirky charm, it is also rather infrequent. The story itself left me feeling mostly indifferent. I enjoyed some of the witchy details - the idea of a "Cousinhood of Witches," or the fact that witches can have either cats or owls as familiars in this world, and that these familiars are what make broomstick-flying possible - but the narrative was a bit wordy for the intended audience, and it failed to involve me with the characters, in any significant way. I'm glad to have read it, of course, but don't strongly recommend it. Beginning chapter-book readers looking for vintage witchy tales would do better to seek out titles such as Jane Little's Spook (also published in 1965), Marian Frances' Witch on a Motorcycle (1972), or any one of Ruth Chew's many stories in this vein. ( )