Witch For Hire, pointy-hat good times that smells like teen spirit

Aspects of middle and high school represent the worst parts of agar. Agar is the gunk that’s collected in a petri dish. The school equivalent of agar gone bad are typically the entitled, popular, pretty without a conscious folk, jocks, bullies or those kids that have a chip on their shoulder for no meaningful reason.  They’re the great heels in popular movies and will resonate with all readers in Witch For Hire. Witch For Hire is a graphic novel by Ted Naifeh that is 100% current, with real-world peer pressure and social strife that teens will encounter. It also adds a fabulous sense of dread, witches, and monsters that are just as real as the weight that popularity and social media add to today’s teens.

Because kids want to level up their reading, those stories with teens will be of interest to tweens. Those 11 or 12-year-olds will be OK with the content in Witch For Hire. There might be one or two choice words that those kids don’t want to say around their parents, or use every day, but that dialogue is used in context in the book.

In Witch For Hire there’s a popular social media trend that has five steps. Once you complete the five steps you’ll have washboard abs, overcome your own personal foibles, and so on. This challenge comes with a curse that follows the people who take part in it though. They start to do cruel things to others that they normally wouldn’t do.

 The social clicks are quickly established in the graphic novel with the pretty people sitting at one lunch table who quickly dispatch one of their younger siblings to sit elsewhere. Cody, the younger sister to one of the pretty people has to sit at the loser table. The theater kids sit there with the non-athletic kids and a couple of goth kids. It’s here where she meets Faye, a girl who dresses like a witch and has been sitting at the loser table longer than the other kids.

However, it’s the pointy hat that attracts the most attention because she genuinely looks the part of a witch. As Faye and Cody get to know each other they realize that neither one is that bad. Faye does play her cards close to the chest and has demonstrated strange, mysterious abilities.  It’s when Faye sees that this social media challenge is getting evil and impacting Cody that she decides to get involved and see if she can make a difference.

What readers won’t expect from Witch For Hire, but receive, is heart and friendship. The two establish a bond that you’ll want to emulate in real life with someone who isn’t just like you. That is placed in direct contrast with the annoyance of social media and the lemmings who follow aspects of it. This challenge impacts every age group in the city, but certainly has more people involved in it who are teens. Thus, when Faye starts to mount a challenge to the entity behind this challenge it’s wide-ranging and presents something that is more than a metaphor.

Now, back to the heel of the story who are perfectly represented in the graphic novel. You’ll cringe when they succeed, smile when (and if…) they get their vengeance, and hold out hope for the current group of high school students. Witch For Hire is a very fun graphic novel to read. It’s realistic but not too graphic and illustrates teens’ frustrations without making light of them. The book also establishes a great character who readers certainly wouldn’t mind seeing more of.

Witch For Hire is by New York Times bestselling author Ted Naifeh and is available on Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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