Possum Magic

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There are now a lot of Australian picture books which star local fauna. Many of them are fairly pedestrian, introducing the young reader to the names of the creatures and perhaps what they eat and their circadian rhythms, but this story is particularly well done because of the mixture of local fauna (beautifully anthropomorphised), Australian food (for humans), Australian geography and Australian dialect. Few Australian picture books manage to combine all of those things, and so Possum Magic has become for Australians like a celebration of Australia. Indeed, this is a book by an Australian, written for Australians, and there was a time when this in itself was something to be celebrated. Kathleen T. Horning; Ginny Moore Kruse; Merri Lindgren (1991). "Picture Books". CCBC Choices (PDF). Cooperative Children's Book Center. p.40 . Retrieved 2 September 2021. Not every picturebook author can get away with this: Half rhyming, half not rhyming. But Mem Fox does:

What's not to love about possums? They're as cute as can be, mischievous, smart, and best of all they have a fantastic story written about them in the form of the Mem Fox story Possum Magic. In Fox’s narrative food is the magic that makes Hush visible. It constructs her as a subject and thus may be said to stand in, metonymically, for culture itself. For Michel Foucault culture is the magic that makes individuals visible. Following Nietzsche, Foucault argues that cultural discourses of truth, power, and knowledge distinguish between normal and deviant behaviour, thus determining individuals’ actions and constructing them as subjects. For Foucault power does not “crush” individuals; it does not need to becauseFeaturing spellbinding magic, puppetry and original music, Monkey Baa’s award-winning team has turned the whimsical world of the book to a live experience for audiences ages 3+ and their families. In case you were wondering just how deep it’s possible to go in the analysis of a seemingly simple children’s story such as this one, Carolyn Daniel has much to say about Possum Magic in her book Voracious Children: Who eats whom in children’s literature. First she points out that this is an example of a Quest Narrative.

Possum Magic has been set to orchestral music and performed three times by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, but not recorded. It has also been made into a highly successful musical which has been touring Australia every two years or so, but which is now in its final performances. (Sept. 2013)Dianne Smith (June 2000), "Biographical Note", A Guide to the papers of Mem Fox (PDF), Lue Rees Archive, p.3 , retrieved 2 September 2021

Discover the wonder of Possum Magic with limited edition collector coin series". Royal Australian Mint . Retrieved 14 September 2017.Maria Savvidis. "Stories in the sun". sl.nsw.gov.au. State Library of NSW . Retrieved 2 September 2021. The trend for popularising (and personifying) the country's native animals saw the creation of such classics as .. Mem Fox and Julie Vivas' Possum Magic (1983),