 First edition (US) | |
| Author | Julie Andrews Edwards |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Harper & Row (US) Collins (UK) |
Publication date | 1974 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 277 |
| ISBN | 0-06-021806-1 |
| OCLC | 979976 |
| LC Class | PZ7.A5673 Las |
The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles is a children's novel written by Julie Edwards, the married name of singer and actress Dame Julie Andrews. More recent editions credit the book to "Julie Andrews Edwards".
Three siblings, Ben, Tom, and Melinda Potter (better known as Lindy), meet Professor Savant while visiting the zoo one rainy day. On Halloween, Lindy gets dared by her brother to knock on the spookiest house on the block for a quarter, which happens to belong to the Professor, and the three become more acquainted with him. After a second meeting, they begin spending time at the Professor's house, where he introduces them to games of concentration and observation. He reveals that there is a magic land called Whangdoodleland that can only be reached through the imagination, and that he is training them to accompany him there.
Whangdoodleland is the home of the last Whangdoodle that lived in the world. Once the Whangdoodle, and other creatures that are now considered imaginary, lived in our world. However, fearing that people were losing their imaginations in the pursuit of power and greed, the Whangdoodle created a magic and peaceful world over which he reigns. The professor and the children explore this world.
Each time the children return, they venture farther and farther into Whangdoodleland, intending to reach the palace where the Last Whangdoodle resides. However, the Whangdoodle's Prime Minister, the "Oily Prock", does not want them to disturb His Highness, and sets up a number of traps, both in Whangdoodleland and the real world to prevent this meeting. He enlists the marvelous and funny creatures of the land in his effort, including the High Behind Splintercat, the Sidewinders, the Oinck, the Gazooks, the Tree Squeaks, and the Swamp Gaboons. The children use their imaginations, intelligence, and the friendship of another denizen, the Whiffle Bird, to outwit the traps.
The kids at last meet the last Whangdoodle. It turns out he wants a female Whangdoodle to be his queen, so he won't be lonely, and Professor Savant's knowledge and talents have the ability to grant the Whangdoodle just that. That is, if the Professor can figure out exactly how to do it.
At the time of the book's publication, Judith Viorst said of the book in the New York Times, "Unfortunately, Julie (Andrews) Edwards is more committed to improving her young readers than she is to entertaining them, and her book is sunk by an overload of virtue." [1]
Author Aimee Bender cites the book as one of the books that sticks with her most from childhood. [2]
Dame Julie Andrews is an English actress, singer, and author. She has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over eight decades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, two Emmy Awards, three Grammy Awards, and six Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for three Tony Awards. One of the biggest box office draws of the 1960s, Andrews has been honoured with the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2007, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2022. She was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
Topkapi is a 1964 American Technicolor heist film produced by Filmways Pictures and distributed by United Artists.
Victor/Victoria is a 1982 musical comedy film written and directed by Blake Edwards and starring Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren, Alex Karras, and John Rhys-Davies. The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, produced by Tony Adams and scored by Henry Mancini, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. Victor/Victoria was adapted as a Broadway musical in 1995. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score or Adaptation Score. It is a remake of the 1933 German film Victor and Victoria.
Marilyn vos Savant is an American magazine columnist who has the highest recorded intelligence quotient (IQ) in the Guinness Book of Records, a competitive category the publication has since retired. Since 1986, she has written "Ask Marilyn", a Parade magazine Sunday column wherein she solves puzzles and answers questions on various subjects, and which popularized the Monty Hall problem in 1990.
The Whangdoodle is a fanciful or humorous being whose undefined appearance and essence is left to individual imagination. Other connotations may include an object of humor, something noisy but of no consequence and insignificant.
Judith Viorst is an American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is known for her humorous observational poetry and for her children's literature. This includes The Tenth Good Thing About Barney and the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), which has sold over two million copies.
Aimee Bender is an American novelist and short story writer, known for her surreal stories and characters. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Torn Curtain is a 1966 American spy political thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews. Written by Brian Moore, the film is set in the Cold War. It is about an American scientist who appears to defect behind the Iron Curtain to East Germany. It is the first of Hitchcock's films to be released without a score by Bernard Herrmann, after the end of their collaboration.
Julie Adams was an American actress, billed as Julia Adams in her early career, primarily known for her numerous television guest roles. She starred in a number of films in the 1950s, including Bend of the River (1952), opposite James Stewart; and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). On television, she was known for her roles as Paula Denning on the 1980s soap opera Capitol, and Eve Simpson on Murder, She Wrote.
The splintercat is a legendary fearsome critter in the folklore of the United States.
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a 1972 ALA Notable Children's Book written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz. It has also won a George G. Stone Center Recognition of Merit, a Georgia Children's Book Award, and is a Reading Rainbow book. Viorst followed this book up with three sequels, Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday, Alexander, Who's Not Going to Move, and Alexander, Who's Trying His Best to Be the Best Boy Ever.
The Tamarind Seed is a 1974 romantic thriller spy drama film written and directed by Blake Edwards and starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name by Evelyn Anthony, the film is about a British Home Office functionary and a Soviet era attaché who are lovers involved in Cold War intrigue. The Tamarind Seed was the first film produced by Lorimar Productions. The film score was composed by John Barry.
Bridge to Terabithia is a 2007 American fantasy drama film directed by Gábor Csupó from a screenplay by David L. Paterson and Jeff Stockwell. It is based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Katherine Paterson and stars Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb, Bailee Madison, Zooey Deschanel, and Robert Patrick. In the film, adolescent children Jesse Aarons (Hutcherson) and Leslie Burke (Robb) create "Terabithia", a fantasy world, which they use to cope with their troubled reality and spend their free time together.
Mary Poppins is a fictional character and the eponymous protagonist of P. L. Travers' books of the same name along with all of their adaptations. A magical English nanny, she blows in on the east wind and arrives at the Banks home at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, London, where she is given charge of the Banks children and teaches them valuable lessons with a magical touch. Travers gives Poppins the accent and vocabulary of a real London nanny: cockney base notes overlaid with a strangled gentility.
Fablehaven is a fantasy book series for children written by Brandon Mull. The book series, which includes Fablehaven, Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star, Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague, Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary and Fablehaven: Keys to the Demon Prison, is published by Shadow Mountain in hardcover and Simon & Schuster in paperback. It is followed by the five-part sequel series Dragonwatch.
Kay Chorao, born as Ann McKay Sproat on January 7, 1936, in Elkhart, Indiana, is an American artist, illustrator and writer of children's books.
Rubeus Hagrid is a fictional character in the Harry Potter book series written by J. K. Rowling. He is introduced in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as a half-giant and half-human who is the gamekeeper and Keeper of Keys and Grounds of Hogwarts, the primary setting for the first six novels. In the third novel Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid is promoted to Care of Magical Creatures professor, and is later revealed to be a member of the Order of the Phoenix. A loyal, friendly, softhearted personality who is easily brought to tears, he is also known for his thick West Country accent.
Christine Davenier is a French author and illustrator of children's books. She has illustrated a large number of books, the authors of which include Jack Prelutsky, Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, Madeleine L'Engle, and Juanita Havill, and has received critical acclaim.
Emma Katherine Walton Hamilton is a British-American children's book author, theatrical director, and actress. She is an instructor in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she serves as Director of the Southampton Children's Literature Fellows program and the Young Artists and Writers Project (YAWP). She is the daughter of singer and actress Dame Julie Andrews and set/costume designer Tony Walton.
The Legend of Holly Claus is a best-selling children's fantasy novel by American author Brittney Ryan published in 2004. It was originally part of the Julie Andrews Collection.
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