It's hard to believe that my Dorrie "retrospective" - begun in June of 2009, when I had the great good fortune to stumble across copies of Dorrie's Magic and Dorrie and the Blue Witch, the first two books in Patricia Coombs' series about this adorably witchy heroine; a series that was one of my best-beloved reading pleasures, as a girl - has actually come to an end! Yes, Dorrie and the Haunted Schoolhouse, published in 1992, is the twentieth and final adventure of the little witch with mismatched socks and crooked hat, a character who first saw print in 1962. (Are you reading this, editors of The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature? The Dorrie series began in 1962, with Dorrie's Magic, not in 1974, with Dorrie and the Wizard's Spell! Do some fact-checking, next time!).

Thirty years is a considerable amount of time, for any picture-book series, and the differences between the early installments of Dorrie's adventures, and the final two (this one, as well as Dorrie and the Pin Witch) are considerable. The illustrative style is significantly changed - the earlier works contained crisp black and white illustrations, with occasional color accents, whereas the final two titles contain full-color artwork - the physical dimensions of the books themselves have been altered (from taller, early-reader style tomes to squarer, more standard "picture-book" volumes), and the later stories, while engaging enough, seem to have little to offer, in the way of something new: something that varies from the tried-and-true "Dorrie" story, in which our heroine battles some malicious magical practitioner, in order to save the clueless adults witches of Witchville.

Oddly enough, although this final Dorrie tale is (sadly) an example of the later, inferior illustrative style, I thought that, from a narrative stand-point, it represented an exciting conclusion to the series, and therefore awarded it four stars, rather than the three I gave to the previous installment. The story of Dorrie's first day at witch school, it follows its eponymous heroine as she, together with her two(?) classmates, Dither and Mince, searches for her missing teacher, Professor Zucchini. A hilarious flying adventure ensues, sending the entire schoolhouse through the air! Is it truly a case of a haunting? Or is something else afoot? Finding out is half the fun!

Although definitely not one of the strongest book in the series, Dorrie and the Haunted Schoolhouse is still a worthy conclusion to the best witchy series to ever see print! ( )