Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs
Part of Read it and Weed , where I take a quick look at books found on the shelves of the International School where I am librarian. Hiding in the cupboards of grade 3, under stacks of Junie B Jones and A to Z mysteries, lay a book I wasn't expecting. At first I didn't think it was worth much at all. With its early 20th century illustration style and condescendingly twee title, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie looks like the prime macguffin of a horror movie involving children and abandoned libraries and hidden cemeteries. Something knocked together from the parts of other tales. But what I'd found was one of the foundational works from which all future twee descended. Snugglepot & Cuddlepie is the work of May Gibbs , whose English family emigrated to Australia around 1900, when she was a child. Obviously enchanted by the new landscape, plants and animals, she fell back on the storyteller's instinct to make sense of the world around her. Thus she created a world of gumnut...