Possum Magic (Voyager Books)

I feel in love with Possum Magic during a semester of teaching in Australia. It is one of the most loved children's book there. "Possum Magic" is filled with Aussie vocabulary such a vegemite and lamingtons that makes a person wish they were back in this wonderful country. My book arrived in mint condition and I cannot wait to share it with my students for years to come!

Very cute book, lovely illustrations. My kids loved this book when they were younger, so I bought it for my niece's little girl and she loves it too.

This is a superbly lovely book for pre-schoolers and children in the early grades. After seeing it in Australia, I ordered three copies, one for each set of grandkids. My grandgirls, 5 and 7, made me read it to them twice, even though they both can read most of it, and I even caught the 9-year-old eavesdropping. It is one of those books whose illustrations match the charm of the text, and both text and pix are simple, straightforward, yet colorful and delightful and totally enchanting. It's the story of how Hush, a little girl possum, is made invisible by her Grandma Poss's magic and their subsequent search to make her visible again, which they do by cycling around Australia (and sailing to Tasmania in an umbrella) and eating the various specialty foods. Just naming them will make any Ozzie homesick: pavlova, lamington, vegemite, minties, etc. Even a Yank tourist like myself gets a little misty-eyed. The only thing the author left out was Victoria Bitter, but it is a children's book, after all.

This is a classic Australian picturebook which is becoming popular again as those of us from the generation who were kids when it was first published (1983) now are buying it ourselves and reading it to our children or nieces and nephews. Granted there's always the hey I remember this book when I was kid factor that drives up sales but unlike a lot of books which have this factor of when you get home and read them you remember that you never really liked that book back when you were kid because it is infact not that good, Possum Magic is remembered and was popular back in the 80's because it was a good book. Although some of the food (remedies for Hush's invisibility) inside are no longer uniquely Australian (which is a good thing), learnign about them along with the uniquely Australian wildlife inside this book would make an ideal gift or purchase for any Australian now living overseas to read to their kids and teach them a bit about their heritage. For anyone whose not Australian it is a great opportunity to learn something about Australian culture.

The basic tale of this book revolves around a little girl possum called Hush whose grandma (named Grandma Poss) who was an expert in bush magic turned Hush invisible to prevent her being eaten by snakes (now of course in reality snakes don't use sight like we do to find their prey but see the heat from the body like someone wearing night vision goggles does so being invisible wouldn't have actually helped Hush but anyway this is a fiction book and that's a discussion/lesson probably left for an age group older than this book's target market). Although Hush gets into a few dilemmas as the result of being invisible such as being sat on by a koala she still gets up to lots of fun like riding down the back of kangaroos like a slippery dip. Hush however wants to know what she looks like so asks Grandma Poss to make her visible again which Grandma Poss has of course forgotten, although she remembers it has something to do with human food. This is the tale of finding the cure and travelling across (with a bit of poetic licence by riding a bike and in a floating umbrella the vast distances of) Australia to find it.

Other good children's books about invisibility if that's what you were after include My Best Friend Is Invisible (Goosebumps) by R. L. Stine, You Are Invisible: CYOA #48 by Susan Saunders, The Invisible Day by Marthe Jocelyn, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex, you can even get an illustrated version of H.G. Wells 1897 classic The Invisible Man (Great Illustrated Classics).

Delightful book with illustrations that takes kids 3-6 on an imaginative trip to Australia. I could identify with the main character, "Grandma Poss."