No knock to Rock, who has an excellent voice-his “Lil' Penny” commercials should be playing on a loop in the Louvre-but his jocular, bemused timbre here conjures a much different atmosphere than the book's prologue. He also sounds unmistakably like Chris Rock. The narrator begins by sputtering out a cough, then says, “Alright, where were we?” as though he’s a substitute teacher trying to figure out which slide of the presentation he’s on. But even though many of the words are the same, the tone is quite different. It’s narrated over a slide show that even includes snippets of Dahl’s original text (including “Witches are REAL!”). It begins with a monologue modeled after the book’s opener. The new adaptation of The Witches, out on HBO Max this week, doesn’t totally carry this brutal worldview forward. Strangers with candy have bad intentions. People who hate children think they smell like shit. The Witches, like Dahl’s best work, taps into a wavelength that acknowledges the dark edges of childhood in a way that so much young adult literature does not, puerile and mean and honest. Dark! It’s a macabre, gripping tale, one which has remained a perennial favorite for kids since its debut more than 35 years ago. He takes his predicament in stride, comforted by the knowledge that he won’t outlive the only person in the world who loves him, but still-it’s a children’s story where the hero is doomed to premature death. The boy and his grandmother ultimately foil the witches’ scheme, but the ending is more melancholic than happily-ever-after: The narrator is transformed into a mouse by the witches even after outwitting them, he cannot change back. (The witches disguise themselves as a society against cruelty towards children.) In classic Dahl fashion, there’s a surfeit of jokes about bodily functions, an unkind depiction of a fat kid as a greedy idiot, and vividly drawn villains who speak in rhyme. While on vacation with his grandmother at a seaside resort, he stumbles into a hush-hush witch conference, where the Grand High Witch explains a plot to turn all the world’s children into mice. As the story progresses, the narrator recounts his fateful encounter with the wicked Grand High Witch-the big, bad boss of all the witches around the world-along with every witch in England, a run-in that shapes his life.