The Wind on the Moon Format: Paperback

A Carnegie Medal winner, this delightful fantasy will appeal to children who love Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows.

In the English village of Midmeddlecum, Major Palfrey asks his two daughters to behave themselves while he is off at war. Sighing, Dinah says, “I think that we are quite likely to be bad, however hard we try not to be,” and her sister, Dorinda, adds helpfully, “Very often, when we think we are behaving well, some grown-up person says we are really quite bad. It’s difficult to tell which is which.” Sure enough, the mischievous sisters soon convince a judge that minds must be changed as often as socks, stage an escape from the local zoo (thanks to a witch’s potion that turns them into kangaroos), and—in the company of a golden puma and silver falcon—set off to rescue their father from the tyrant of Bombardy. A tale of hilarity and great adventure, The Wind on the Moon is also a work of high seriousness; after all, “life without freedom,” as the valiant puma makes clear, “is a poor, poor thing.”

Eric Linklater (1899–1974) wrote scores of novels for adults and children. He also was a journalist in India, commander of a wartime fortress in the Orkney Islands, and rector of Aberdeen University.

Nicolas Bentley (1907–1978) drew the pictures for the first edition of T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.