Witch hat atelier

Coco wants to be a witch so bad! But witches are born, not made, and Coco was not made that way. When a witch visits her town and offers to magically repair a broken carriage, Coco sneaks a peek into the witch's workroom and sees that spells are drawn, not cast. While attempting her own drawings, she unknowingly performs one of the forbidden spells, turning her mother to stone. Begging to be allowed to keep her memory and save her mother, Coco is accepted as an apprentice to the witch and taken to his atelier, where she is introduced to her fellow students. Working within a familiar trope, mangaka Shirahama depends on her readers to understand how quest stories work. The story jumps quickly into Coco's adventure and is propelled into a plot twist that would normally take a couple of volumes to reach. This spareness of world building is easily forgiven, thanks to gorgeously detailed artwork, including a few full-color pages at the beginning of the book. With this book, the series is currently five volumes long and is ongoing in Japan, so purchasing further volumes is recommended. Fantastic fantasy for tweens and up.