Set deep in the Appalachian mountains around 1920, this American folktale is about a plucky young girl named Mutzmag. In a series of hair-raising and comical adventures, Mutzmag saves her two gullible half-sisters from two backwoods ogres. Mutzmag's mother dies early in the story, and her two teenaged sisters decide to leave their tumble-down shack and seek their fortunes elsewhere. Mutzmag tags along acting as a servant girl to her abusive siblings. The girls lose their way in the forest and end up at the cabin of a wicked witch and her giant husband who plan to kill the girls. quick-witted Mutzmag saves the day with nothing but a broken pocket-knife and a ball of string.

With nothing more than her plucky spirit and her pocket knife, a mountain girl outwits a witch and an ogre to save herself and her sisters.

Although I do not count myself a fan of Stephen King's horror novels, I did enjoy his non-fiction exploration of horror Danse Macabre (1981). At one point, King says that reading and watching the scary stuff is like "lifting a trapdoor to the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in the subterranean river beneath." He goes on to say that love and other more civilized emotions are wonderful "as long as you keep the gators fed." ...Mutzmag...will fatten a couple gators and possibly alarm a few devotees of the Care Bears/Barney the Dinosaur line of children's films...Mutzmag is a beautifully-filmed fairy tale in the traditional sense: things turn out okay in the end, but there's hell to pay along the way. Too intense for younger children, older kids and early teens will love this. Highly recommended.

 

Mutzmag by Tom Davenport
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