Norman Lindsay (1879-1970) wrote The Magic Pudding to settle an argument with a friend who claimed that children liked to read about fairies. Lindsay argued instead that they liked to read about food. The author of several novels, Lindsay was also a caricaturist, sculptor, painter, and pen-and-ink artist renowned in Australia and beyond. »

The Magic Pudding

Introduction by Philip Pullman
Written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay

The Magic Pudding is a pie, except when it's something else, like a steak, or a jam donut, or an apple dumpling, or whatever its owner wants it to be. And it never runs out. No matter how many slices you cut, there's always something left over. It's magic.

But the Magic Pudding is also alive. It walks and it talks and it's got a personality like no other. A meaner, sulkier, snider, snarlinger Pudding you've never met.

So Bunyip Bluegum (the koala bear) finds out when he joins Barnacle Bill (the sailor) and Sam Sawnoff (the penguin bold) as members of the Noble Society of Pudding Owners, whose "members are required to wander along the roads, indulgin' in conversation, song and story, and eatin' at regular intervals from the Pudding." Wild and woolly, funny and outrageously fun, The Magic Pudding stands somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and The Stinky Cheese Man as one of the craziest books ever written for young readers.

Reviews

This is the funniest children's book ever written. I've been laughing at it for fifty years, and when I read it again this morning, I laughed as much as I ever did.
— Philip Pullman

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