The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards
There were a lot of great fantasy worlds out there when I was a kid, and like any discerning bookworm, I shopped around. I dabbled in Narnia, Platform 13, Ender Wiggin&rsquo;s Battle School, Lyra&rsquo;s atheist Oxford. I even dreamed up my own third-rate knock-off, called Celcia, which featured mouse-people with ponytails and a sort of lo-fi Justice League called the Magic Bicycle Girls. Someday I&rsquo;ll turn it into a thinly veiled religious allegory and make millions. (Lewis, L&rsquo;Engle, Pullman ― I&rsquo;m looking at you.) In any case, that DIY impulse must have something to do with why, despite a surplus of capital-l Literature at my fingertips, I had to go and fall in love with a ramshackle joint like Whangdoodleland.&nbsp;Does The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles belong in the kid-lit Criterion? Has anyone even read it besides me (and the select family members willing to humor me when I was eight)? Your guess is as good as mine, friends. But Whangdoodleland ― brought to us by the woman formerly known as Poppins, von Trapp, and the queen of Genovia ― was the uncontested travel destination of my youth.
The place had everything: five-legged anteaters, bread-scented flowers, a shrill little thing called a Whiffle Bird that might be the mockingjay&rsquo;s nutty ancestor. Again and again I donned my metaphorical scrappy cap, joining Ben, Tom, and Lindy Potter on their mission to find the last of that very endangered species called the Whangdoodle.&nbsp;Even today, a surprising amount of the mythology sticks with me. Mention the Nobel Prize and I think of Professor Savant, esteemed Whangdoodle academic and imagination theorist. Ask me to define ecstasy and I&rsquo;ll point you towards the High-Behind Splintercat, eternally tumbling through a field of catnip in &ldquo;an absolute dither of delight.&rdquo; I know the best butterflies are Flutterbyes and that they are truly papilionaceous. I tend to picture Otto von Bismarck with a diabolical Yo-Yo just like oily prime minister Prock&rsquo;s. (I&rsquo;m a European history major, so this kinda comes up a lot.)And, okay, maybe the fun is dampened by the it&rsquo;s-all-in-your-head disclaimer, which feels no more satisfying here than it does when Dorothy wakes up back in black-and-white Kansas. Whangdoodleland, like Oz, has one foot perennially stuck in what today&rsquo;s kids might call Muggledom. And, yes, okay, the deus ex professor that sets this imaginary round trip in motion feels, like, totally creepy in today&rsquo;s world. Recap: local eccentric approaches three unchaperoned children, invites them back to his cavernous bachelor pad, enlists them in secret psychoactive &ldquo;experiments&rdquo; that Mummy just wouldn&rsquo;t understand.&nbsp;Wait, what? &nbsp;But that&rsquo;s the thing ― the book is super, super uncynical. This is a world where chummy old men always have honest intentions; where the word &ldquo;whangdoodle&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t the dorkiest thing you&rsquo;ve ever heard; where make-believe adventures are no less badass than the real kind. And in a way, that&rsquo;s kind of empowering ― because if a trio of bookish, thoroughly scar-free Potter children can conjure up this kind of trouble, then why the hell can&rsquo;t you? For me, at least, the cotton-can