Bogwoppit (A Puffin Book)

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Firstly we have Samantha, an orphan who has been living with one of her aunts after her own mother died. I have been looking for this book for years because I LOVED it as a child, but it's always out of print. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I love it just as much today as I did back then, and I think it’s a brilliantly constructed, cleverly written and humorous story that will appeal to any generation. It immediately sold out but disappeared until re-issued in abridged form by Kaye Webb at Puffin Books twenty years later, when it became a best-seller.

Shirley Hughes has created some beautiful illustrations to accompany the text which really enhances the story, and I loved repeatedly reading this tale of an ordinary girl who has an extraordinary adventure and ends up with everything she ever wanted. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. I would have preferred more about the old house and garden, and less about the bogwoppits, who are unpleasant and stinky, but it a child who enjoys all the magical creature books around today were to somehow come across it, they might like the bogwoppits much more than I did. They included The Good Little Christmas Tree of 1943, and Gobbolino, the Witch’s Cat first published the previous year.He was quite prepared to believe that the Bogwoppit existed, but not that people behaved as they did throughout the book.

There are host of well-developed and hilarious characters here, all interacting in madcap ways, to make an entertaining and fulfilling story.

The antisocial aunt lives in a mansion in a park, and absolutely does not want the girl staying there.

The appeal of this book is the humour and the sheer level of imagination that has gone into the story.The way the relationship develops between these two spiky and independent characters, who we can see are lonely and actually need each other, is fun to read and I think all children secretly dream of being able to speak to adults the way Samantha does and getting away with it! Luckily, Samantha discovers a furry, blue-eyed creature living in the cellar: a bogwoppit, once believed to be extinct. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Ursula Moray Williams was born on 19 April 1911 at Petersfield, Hampshire, ten minutes after her twin sister, Barbara.

When Aunt Lily marries and moves to America, orphan Samantha is packed off to her Aunt Daisy, who has no time for children. But found, as ever with Williams' books, that the books have an old-fashionedness of the very worst kind, the casual disrespect for anyone who is not English speaking, white, middle class kind. I'm glad Puffin republished these lesser known children's stories, and with wonderful covers which is always a good thing. The story is interesting, I remember being gripped by it as a kid, and with a group of my friends, because it has more tragedy in it than most books for kids that age, and yet it's fun, quirky, and has so many things in it that you want in a story at that age.By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. She wrote and illustrated over sixty books for children with the most notable being Gobbolino the Witch's Cat and The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse. She discovers they were thought to be extinct, and is deeply horrified when her aunt, who considers them pests, kills all of them with poison. Aunt Daisy wants to get rid of them all, but Samantha grows very fond of one and can't bear to part with him. After her husband's death in 1974, Ursula Moray Williams remained active, writing, gardening, giving talks and visiting her family in various parts of the world.