183E: Not Timothy and two witches

I read a children’s book in the mid 70s to early 80s about a young boy who meets a good witch who brings him into her house and while she is in the other room he finds a magical book of fairy tales. When he starts to read it the pictures start moving. He watches a story about a princess who wears out her shoes every night and is always tired. I think the king says that whoever figures out how she does it will get to marry her. So a young man spies on her at night and sees her get up and go through a secret passage to a place I think was a gypsy camp where she dances all night.
Then the good witch comes back in the room and at some point in the story she tells him not to go through the gate in the hedge in her yard because on the other side is another world where there is an evil witch. Later in the story he goes through the gate and gets captured by baba yaga. But I don’t think baba yaga is the evil witch she warned him about. She just happens to be there. I remember he saw the hut walking around on its chicken legs and when he goes inside she catches him and keeps him there while she flies away on her mortar and pestle. At some point he sees the hut dancing and jumping and flipping all around. I don’t remember what happened with the evil witch that the good witch warned him about. That’s all I remember. For a long time I thought this book was Timothy and two witches, but I found a copy of that and when I read it I knew it was the wrong one.

3 thoughts on “183E: Not Timothy and two witches

    1. Anna Kestava

      You’re right that the animated story the boy sees is the 12 dancing princesses, but that was only a small part of the story

      The book was about the boy meeting the witch and all the magical things he experiences while he is there

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.