A Witch's Guide to Burning

by Aminder Dhaliwal

Overview

Dhaliwal creates a land ruled by magic and fire, where the sky is thick with witches

A witch’s work is never done when she works for the people. With the success of her town relying on her magic, demands are high. But what happens when a witch can't keep up with the magical requests? She is burnt, of course—in a cruel ritual that extinguishes her magic and erases all her memories, making her just like everybody else. But when a burning ceremony is interrupted by rain in Chamomile Valley, a witch is left writhing at the stake. It's up to a witch doctor and her toad friend to save the singed witch and nurse her back to health. Can they help her before her magic is lost forever?

Aminder Dhaliwal’s A Witch’s Guide to Burning is a whimsical and humorous allegory for burnout in a society in desperate need of self-care. With a lavish blend of prose, illustration, and comics, Dhaliwal crafts an enthralling hybrid adventure story like you’ve never seen before. Follow Singe and her companions Yew-Veda and Bufo Wonder as they journey across dangerous landscapes, battling demons along the way in an extraordinary tale about sacrifice and healing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770466999
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	05/28/2024
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	10 - 18 Years

About the Author

Aminder Dhaliwal is a native of Brampton, Ontario and received a Bachelors of Animation from Sheridan College. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she is the Director at Disney TV Animation. Previously, she worked as a Storyboard Director at Cartoon Network and Storyboard Director on the Nickelodeon show Sanjay and Craig. She has serialized Woman World biweekly on instagram since March 2017 and has garnered over 120,000 followers. Woman World was nominated for an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic.

Editorial Reviews

05/06/2024

Dhaliwal (Cyclopedia Exotica) conjures a sly and cutesy fantasy world in this tale of finding the strength to face the past. In Chamomile Valley, an amnesiac young service witch named Singe is rescued after being burned at the stake and left for dead when her magic dried up. With Yew-Veda, a witch doctor, and Bufo Wonder, a witch who’s accidentally turned himself into a toad, Singe sets out to recover her magic and her memory. The trio is pursued by the demons Disgust, Doubt, and Despair, and aided by the Smoke Witch, the collective spirit of burned witches past. The format blends blocks of text with comics and illustration, and in a gimmicky design quirk, certain repeated words appear to burn, glow, wiggle, and drift away. Recipe spells are scattered throughout, ranging from chamomile tea to a self-love potion (actually chocolate-covered strawberries). Touches of whimsy lend to the middle grade fantasy vibe, though the pacing is uneven. It adds up to a charming albeit jumbled potion. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A grand adventure in a richly articulated setting, featuring a racially diverse cast and clever twists aplenty.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2024-03-23
A young witch whose magic has been burned away undertakes healing journeys both physical and metaphorical in this graphic novel that was first serialized on Instagram.

Mingling riveting illustrations that incorporate fades, flashbacks, and other cinematic effects with a typographically venturesome narrative, Dhaliwal tells a tale of heroic exploits in which allegorical elements are never far beneath the surface. Burned at the stake but rescued by a pair of helpful (if often annoying) witches on a quest of their own, dark-skinned young “Singe” goes in search of her real name and the rest of her burned-away memories, as well as her lost magic, while her body slowly recovers. Along the way to a climax on the shores of Perish Lake, she meets other witches—notably Smoke Witch, a collective gathering of burnt but still aware ashes that rides the night wind—and engages in desperate struggles with three powerful, vividly portrayed demons: Disgust, Doubt, and Despair. The author’s imagination and graphic skills outpace her literary chops, but there’s plenty of entertaining friction and bonding in the colorfully wrought cast, and more than enough action in the plot to make it easy to overlook awkward phrasings and inappropriate word choices. Said plot does take some arbitrary turns, perhaps so that the ending can be left conveniently open. Still, it’s a grand adventure in a richly articulated setting, featuring a racially diverse cast and clever twists aplenty.

A few rough bits but inventive and visually stunning. (Graphic fantasy. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews