Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seismological Singularity!, June 24, 2004
A beautiful wonderful book of my youth. You may remember author Margaret Mahy from her fabulous young adult novels like, "The Changeover" or "The Haunting". You may remember illustrator Brian Froud from Terry Jones's delightfully twisted, "Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book". Back in 1975, these two artists in their fields worked together to create a book accomplished the mighty task of appearing sweet without being horribly precious. "Ultra-Violet Catastrophe!" (a term that, within context, actually makes a lot of sense) is about Sally. Preferring to spend her days in trees as Horrible Stumper the tree pirate, Sally is forced to clean up and accompany her mother to Aunt Anne Pringle's house. The idea does not appeal to Sally, especially since Aunt Anne is very fond of all things neat and tidy, including little girls. It is fortunate, therefore, that when Sally arrives she finds that staying with Aunt Anne is none other than Great Uncle Magnus Pringle. The two are told to go for a walk, and while doing so find that they have a lot in common. Great-Uncle Magnus is a fan of burrowing into hedges, wading through muddy ponds, singing great silly songs, and building dams in streams. While out and about the two bond over the man's favorite phrases including, "Ultra-Violet Catastrophe" (a response one has to being treated like a potted plant) and "Seismological Singularity". After being chased by a mere cow (quoth Sally, "A cow with a calf isn't as mere as other cows, I don't think") and escaping over a barbed wire fence the two are, needless to say, a tad dirty/ripped to shreds/mud streaked. They are placed on some newspapers to dry off and soon the two bid one another a fond farewell. Great-Uncle Magnus invites Sally and her mother to visit him at the sea where he lives. The final shot is of the large man waving goodbye, his trousers ripped in the most embarrassing of places.
There's a wonderful tone and feel to this story. Anyone looking for a lovely intergenerational tale about being yourself would do well to give this book a look-see. And Mahy has such a fabulous way of describing things. Some of the phrases that have stayed with me over the years include the sentence, "Her hair was brushed until it shone and her ears went all red and hot", and, "His voice was loud - loud but not crackly. It was rather like guns at sea". The accompanying illustrations by Brian Froud are wonderfully evocative. The first shot of Sally shows her sitting on a tree branch, ankles crossed and her big thick head of hair surrounding her as she scowls. The more you look at Sally the more sense it makes that this illustrator would later go on to create books of squashed fairies. The country in which this takes place is never named, and you can't help but love seeing the fields, trees, rocks, and streams where the two wayward travelers do their exploring.
Of all the forgotten and out-of-print picture books out there, this has to be one of the greatest. A truly wonderful forgotten treasure, it deserves to be republished and brought to the attention of millions of children once more. If you find yourself lucky enough to own a copy, read it to the little ones you know every single day. It'll do you both quite a lot of good.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Use of Language, August 24, 2007
This book is what inspired me as a child to want to read more, write poetry, fiction, and plays, enjoy the sound of language and become a linguist as an adult. Mahy uses language phenomenally well to paint a picture the child really grasps. What Charlotte Mason would call "a Living Book."
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For Cute!, June 29, 2000
By A Customer
I love this book! It was one of the first ones that I ever remeber looking at with my mother and that I ever read! I have an Uncle like Uncle Magnus, and when I was little, it used to make me laugh at how much he was like MY uncle! Now, all grown up, I think that this book is one of the cutest stories ever written and it charms me all over again every time that I read it.
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