Possum Magic

Product Information

Richards, Kel (1 June 2022). "Kel Richards: Beloved children's classics are being sacrificed at the altar of politically correct wokery". Sky News Australia . Retrieved 7 June 2022. Possum Magic is a 1983 children's picture book by Australian author Mem Fox, and illustrated by Julie Vivas. It concerns a young female possum, named Hush, who becomes invisible and has a number of adventures. In 2001, a film was made by the American company Weston Woods and narrated by the author. The consumer above is describing, nay lamenting, that they as parent are required to have a dialogic reading experience with their own child.

I didn’t grow up in Australia, but live here as an adult, so I approach this particular picture book both as a foreigner and as an outsider. There is now a counting book to accompany the original story. WONDERFULNESSThe tenth publisher: Omnibus Books in Adelaide, accepted it but asked me to cut the story by two thirds, re-write it more lyrically, make it even more Australian and change the mice to a cuddly Australian animal. I chose possums. (Australian possums are very soft and cute.) Poor Julie re-did all the illustrations. The book was published early in 1983.

Mix dry ingredients, making a well in the centre. Dissolve baking soda in the boiling water. Warm the butter and the syrup in a small pan until the butter is runny, then add the soda & water. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and mix. If the mixture is too dry add a little more water. Roll out and cut biscuits roughly 3 inches round. Bake in oven for 20 minutes at 180 Centigrade (350 Fahrenheit.) Children's awards: Theme of book 'transcends age' " (scan). The Canberra Times. 21 July 1984. p.8 . Retrieved 2 September 2021– via Trove. Again, this popular technique is employed here, with three sequences that begin with: Because she couldn’t be seen…’ NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATION OF POSSUM MAGICGrandma Poss loves making magic. She makes wombats blue and kookaburras pink. She makes dingoes smile and emus shrink. But one day, when danger arrives, Grandma Poss uses her most magical spell to make Hush invisible. Beat together the butter, sugar and eggs. Add milk, then add the flour and beat well. Bake in a large square cake tin for 45-50 mins at ‘cake temperature’ (gas 180C or 350F; electric 180-200C or 350-400F). When completely cold, cut into 3 inch squares, cover with icing (frosting) and dip in fine coconut. (In the USA grind or vitamise coarse coconut till it’s in smaller, finer pieces, if you can be bothered. Otherwise the coarse coconut will do although it won’t be truly authentic.) Eliza Berlage (2018). "Australia in Three Books". Meanjin. Melbourne University Publishing. 77 (4): 15–17. ISSN 0025-6293 . Retrieved 2 September 2021.

To extend this idea a little further, though it is true that young children will accept almost anything in a well-written story, this is precisely the reason we need to be careful about offering them stories with a modern ideology. When there is the symbolic annihilation of non-whites and female characters, and world-views which should have gone the way of the dodo, it’s not that the child reader doesn’t notice; it’s because these ideas are being so thoroughly taken on board that the ideas themselves seem invisible. Admin (29 August 2017). "Nan Chauncy Award 2017". readingtime.com.au. Children's Book Council of Australia . Retrieved 2 September 2021. Greenaway, Judith. "Review: Possum Magic, Sydney Opera House". ArtsHub Australia . Retrieved 2019-07-10. Mem Fox is Australia’s most highly regarded picture-book author. Her first book, Possum Magic, is the best selling children’s book ever in Australia, with sales of over three million. And in the USA Time for Bed and Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge have each sold over a million copies. Time for Bed is on Oprah’s list of the twenty best children’s books of all time. Mem has written thirty picture books for children and five non-fiction books for adults, including the best-selling Reading Magic, aimed at parents of very young children. I chose possums as the main characters for this book because we had possums on our roof and the babies were adorable. I didn’t include Canberra, the national capital, because it wasn’t a state capital. I chose the casino in Hobart because it was famous at the time for being new and for being the first legal casino in Australia. I chose pumpkin scones in Brisbane (for those of you reading this outside Australia, Brisbane is the capital of the state of Queensland) because at that time the wife of the premier of Queensland was Flo Bjelke-Petersen, nationally famous for her pumpkin scones, which was an in-joke for the parents who read the book to their children. The other foods were chosen for their alliterative qualities and because they were typically Australian.Not every member of the international audience appreciates the book’s content. I suspect this is a reflection on how many books are exported from America, compared to the very small proportion imported to America: Justine Power, ed. (2018). IBBY Australia Honour Books List 1962-2018. IBBY Australia. p.17. ISBN 978-0-646-99553-3. Possum Magic takes us on a fantastical journey to cities around Australia to find the food that makes Hush visible again. Goodall, Hamish (2 June 2022). "Australian researcher claims children's book are not diverse enough". 7 News . Retrieved 7 June 2022.

Mem Fox was born in Australia, grew up in Africa, studied drama in England, and returned to Adelaide, Australia in 1970, where she has lived with her husband, Malcolm, and daughter Chloë, happily ever after. Mem Fox is a beloved Australian children's author, and the writer of Possum Magic. She is a professor and public speaker, though has been semi-retired since 1996. In 1978 I was 32. Chloë was 7. She was such an avid reader I couldn’t keep up with her passion for books so I decided, as a non-traditional student, to take a course in children’s literature to find out about as many books as possible that might interest her, particularly those that had been published since my own childhood. it is] one of the prime effects of power that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain discourses, certain desires, come to be identified and constituted as individuals… The individual is an effect of power, and at the same time, or precisely to the extent to which it is that effect, it is the element of its articulation. The individual which power has constituted is at the same time its vehicle. Possum Magic is a classic Australian picture book by Mem Fox. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BboBeS-vhjg WHAT HAPPENS IN THE STORY OF POSSUM MAGIC

11 – 22 April 2023

Perhaps one difference between writing for young children and writing for adults in general is that in picture books an author can present any number of strange and unlikely things, and the audience will accept it — not as fact, but as a part of the story. So it is with Possum Magic; of course you turn invisible with a potion, and of course the only way to make yourself visible again is to travel around the country eating typically Australian junk food. Anything is possible in a world where possums talk, and wear glasses and sneakers. Things do make sense within the world of the story (somewhat): ‘…which is why Grandma Poss had made her invisible in the first place’. I heard Mem being interviewed on TV a while ago. She said that if you didn't have time as parents to read several books a day to your children (meaning picture books, as you might imagine) you should have had gold fish instead. Not surprisingly, maybe, since my mother taught with Mem when we were little and in fact Mem gave us elocution lessons while we were in primary school. My parents thought we should have all these extra things in our lives, but we were just as poor as poor could be, so if somebody like a schoolteaching mate could be called upon to get involved, so much the better. She was a dramatic, vivacious teacher. We've no doubt that your students will absolutely love reading the story, it's a firm favourite here in the office, but that's not where the fun ends. We have a range of great possum-themed resources that can accompany your study of the story, or any kind of lessons themed around possums themselves, like this Possum Magic Craft Template.