The Magic Pudding. Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and His Friends Bill Barnacle & Sam Sawnoff - Softcover

Norman Lindsay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444423312 ISBN 13: 9781444423310

Publisher: Aeterna, 2023

Synopsis

Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive collection. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Whilst the books in this collection have not been hand curated, an aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature. As a result of this book being first published many decades ago, it may have occasional imperfections. These imperfections may include poor picture quality, blurred or missing text. While some of these imperfections may have appeared in the original work, others may have resulted from the scanning process that has been applied. However, our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. While some publishers have applied optical character recognition (OCR), this approach has its own drawbacks, which include formatting errors, misspelt words, or the presence of inappropriate characters. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic book, and that the occasional imperfection that it might contain will not detract from the experience.

About this title

About the Author

Norman Lindsay (1879–1969) was born in Victoria, Australia, the fifth of ten children, several of whom grew up to be artists. At age seventeen, he left home and moved to Melbourne, where he found work as an illustrator. Famously prolific in many mediums, Lindsay produced countless oil paintings, drawings, etchings, and watercolors, as well as eleven novels. He was famous, too, for the countless controversies he happily provoked throughout his long life. As his granddaughter later explained: “He fought the wowsers, he fought the hypocrites, the people that were going to stop and stifle creative freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of thought.” Lindsay’s home is now a museum of his works run by Australia’s National Trust. After entertaining generations of young Australians, The Magic Pudding is recognized as a classic of children’s literature, and in 2000 a sculpture of Bunyip Bluegum and friends (including the Pudding itself) was unveiled as the centerpiece of the children’s garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne.
 
Philip Pullman is the author of the trilogy His Dark Materials, the third book of which, The Amber Spyglass, was the first children’s book to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. He spent part of his childhood in Australia, where he first encountered The Magic Pudding. He now lives and works in Oxford, England.

Review

"I think it’s the funniest children’s book ever written.  One of the great strengths of the book is its illustration, by Lindsay himself. He was best known as a visual artist, producing thousands of paintings, etchings, drawings, and sculptures, but his pictures for The Magic Pudding are his best work, in my view. They are so vigorous and absurd, so strongly characterized and brilliantly detailed, that my eye delights in them still.” —Philip Pullman on his favorite children’s book, Publishers Weekly, December 2015  

“The Magic Pudding ... is one of my all-time favourite children’s books – an unmissable read for anyone who has not already encountered it ... The New York Review’s Children’s collection is full of such choice reprints that I would gladly have every one of their publications on my shelves.” —Kate Kellaway, The Guardian (UK)

“A robust fantasy, The Magic Pudding was first published in 1918 but shows few signs of its age...[a] quirky tale about the adventures of Bunyip Bluegum, an irrepressible, polite young koala. He meets various eccentric characters who bust into song and rhyme. In the introduction to the new edition, Philip Pullman...calls Lindsay’s work ‘the funniest children’s book ever written’...You can feel Lindsay carried away on the wings of his own energy.”—USA Today

“Philip Pullman’s favourite book ... satirical, wise and brilliantly illustrated by Lindsay” —The Sunday Times (UK)
 
“The illustrations are great fun, the characters burst into comic verse at the drop of a hat, and it’s hard to resist.”—The Horn Book Magazine

Edition details

• Publisher: Aeterna
• Publication date: 2023
• ISBN 10: 1444423312
• ISBN 13: 9781444423310
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 78