Muddle Earth - Hardcover

Stewart, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333947991 ISBN 13: 9780333947999

Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books, 2003

Synopsis

Where would you find a perfumed bog filled with pink stinky hogs and exploding gas frogs? A place that's home to a wizard with only one spell, an ogre who cries a lot and a very sarcastic budgie? Welcome to Muddle Earth. A place where anything can happen - and it usually does. Joe Jefferson, an ordinary schoolboy from ordinary earth, is about to find his life changed for ever. Prepare for a great battle of good, evil and sort-of OK . . .

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell are the geniuses behind the phenomenally successful Edge Chronicles, the Rabbit and Hedgehog picture books and, for Macmillan, The Blobheads. They both have hugely successful careers separately, Paul as a writer of children's books and Chris as an illustrator and cartoonist for the New Statesman and the Observer. They both live in Brighton, where they met picking up their children from school.

From Publishers Weekly:

The fertile partnership of Stewart and Riddell (The Edge Chronicles) has produced a fine canon of Monty Python-esque fantasy nonsense, but the silliness is taken to new heights in this charming comedy. Randalf the Wise, the only wizard in Muddle Earth, casts a spell to conjure a warrior hero and, not being a particularly gifted wizard, ends up summoning young Joe Jefferson and his dog. Along with his sarcastic budgie, Veronica, and cowardly troll, Norbert the Not-Very-Big, Randolph brings Joe to Muddle Earth's ruler, the Horned Baron, who hires the boy to defeat the ogre Engelbert the Enormous. Engelbert is upset, because his beloved snuggly-wuggly has gone missing, and Joe's gentle touch and quick thinking save the day. Unfortunately, the spell that Randalf needs to send Joe back home is in the hands of the evil Dr. Cuddles, a criminal mastermind who lives in an adorable little cottage in Giggle Glade. From there things become even sillier, with sentient silverware, a kidnapped queen no one wants to rescue and a vicious-looking dragon who turns out to be perfectly nice. Stewart's plotting and dialogue are squarely in the anything-can-happen realm of Douglas Adams; Riddell's pen-and-ink illustrations are perfectly suited to the tone of the book. This is a big, goofy, laugh-out-loud delight. Ages 10-up. (Aug.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0333947991
• ISBN 13: 9780333947999
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448
• Illustrator: Chris Riddell