Customer Reviews

The Three Royal Monkeys

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The Three Royal Monkeys is an old book- most little kids wouldn't want anything to do with it, but if you just read the first couple of pages, you'd fall in love with it. It's got a children's book idea, but it's written for older kids. It's kind of like Lord of the Rings- not the story line or anything. These simple little "mulla-mulgars" (monkeys) have magic, their father goes in search of Tishnar, his brother's kindom, and he doesn't return in seven mulla-mulgar years. So his three sons, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod go in search of Tishnar. They have interactions with Oogmars (humans) and learn how to speak their language. I'm a seventh grader, and I love it. I know some adults that love it. It's an enchanting book, you have to read it.

This is the most profound book that I read as a child -- the only one that could be compared in its greatness to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In its imaginative, symbolic, and numinous depth it is one of the most unusual, striking books I have ever read. Through the nature of its story, its characters, its language, and the encounters that the characters have with multiple layers of human experience, it is an imaginative feat on the part of the author, Walter de la Mare (1873-1956). Originally published in 1910 as The Three Mulla-Mulgars, The Three Royal Monkeys is in effect an Odyssey for children, telling the story of how three monkey brothers undertake a long and arduous voyage encompassing multiple adventures and encounters with diverse, deep, and mysterious aspects of life in order to arrive at a paradise-like land from which their late father originated. The richness, vividness, and numinousness of the story is conveyed not only by its content but by its partially invented language. That is, the English is liberally sprinkled with names and words in the language that the monkeys themselves speak, so that it conveys the sense of being inside of a mysterious, far-away, magical, animal world that is at the same time human in its resonance: as a child I had the sense of being transported to a place where I intuited things and experiences that were way beyond my years. In a way this book would be beloved of Jungians because of the way it captures "archetypal" experience. I was fortunate to have had an uncle and aunt who always gave me and other members of my family special, unusual presents, and I consider myself so lucky that they gave me this book when I was eight years old, although I don't remember if I read it then or somewhat later. It is sad that it is currently out of print. I hope that other children will be similarly blessed by having this book given to them or made accessible through the library.

If you like the Hobbit, you'll love this "children's" novel about three royal monkeys (or mulla-mulgars) who journey across a strangely wintery fantasy Africa so that they can live with their "Uncle Assasimmon, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar". On the way, they encounter flesh-eating "minimuls," "mountain mulgars" who do battle with eagles, the deadly beast Immanala, a beautiful water-midden who tricks one of the mulgars and takes his magic "wonderstone", a lost "Oomgar" from England, and many other adventures. The tone of the writing is wonderfully poetic and evocative, the verbal equivalent of Arthur Rackham's paintings. It's a crime this novel isn't better known.