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| The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet |
Both series I checked out again and again at the library to read. I eventually ended up with a boxed set of paperback copies of 4 of the 6 Borrowers books. This Mushroom Planet book, by Eleanor Cameron, I got for 15 cents at a garage sale. I've not re-read these since the early 1970s. I wonder how they will hold up from memories of reading them 40 years ago? Will they be as fungus as I remember them? The Borrowers has been adapted to TV and film. The Mushroom Planet series, involving California children building a spaceship to travel to a hidden and unknown moon of Earth, haven't been adapted into anything as far as I know. I suppose if it ever happens, it will be a CGI-fest filled with hypercephalic muppets.The books are probably a lot less popular than the Borrowers books over all. As with the Borrowers, there are 6 Mushroom Planet books.
These books sure made me want to build a spaceship and travel to near-earth orbit. Quite a wild dream for a child, and pretty hard to realize unless you grow up to be Richard Branson, and even he with all his money is barely able to do it even now. When the movie Explorers came out in 1985, about kids building a spaceship out of a Tilt-A-Whirl, I could not help but be reminded of the Mushroom Planet books.
In common with the TV series Land of the Lost the Mushroom Planet books feature a a decayed ruined metropolis called "The Lost City", a remnant of a civilization from a thousand years before in both stories. Mushroom Planet and Land of the Lost also both feature a character named Ta. The Mushroom Planet Ta is Great, and the Land of the Lost one only imagines himself to be.
Another memory of the books is that my fifth grade teacher (the second one) hated the Mushroom Planet books with a passion. I suppose like some librarians have hated the Oz books.
I suppose I'd better find the rest of these. And in researching this post. I find that there is one I'd never heard of before and have never read.
10 comments:
Two of my favorite series, too, dmarks--as you know. Your teacher hated THE MUSHROOM PLANET books? Why on earth? It would be hard for today's children to have the same response to them as we did way back when, since space exploration in the interim has become almost commonplace.
To THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET and Mary Norton's THE BORROWERS, I'd add Palmer Brown's THE SILVER NUTMEG. There was my daydream triumvirate of grade school reading--over and over and over, all of them.
Two of my favorite series, too, dmarks--as you know. Your teacher hated THE MUSHROOM PLANET books? Why on earth? It would be hard for today's children to have the same response to them as we did way back when, since space exploration in the interim has become almost commonplace.
To THE WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET and Mary Norton's THE BORROWERS, I'd add Palmer Brown's THE SILVER NUTMEG. There was my daydream triumvirate of grade school reading--over and over and over, all of them.
I think the Mushroom Planet books are classics! I recommend them whenever it seems even a bit appropriate :)
As a librarian, I get tired of some books that children obsess over, but I never hate them!
Word has it that Jerry Garcia made multiple trips to that same destination.
I have not read these Mushroom treats! I will have to see if our library has them. They sound fun.
I loved the Oz books. We had the whole set. It was the first time I noticed that the movie was not like a book.
Mostly I was caught up in the Hardy Boys, The Bobbsie Twins and Nancy Drew until I read "Have Space Suit Will Travel". Then I was hooked on Sci-fi.
I was a Hardy Boys fan as a youngster, but the Civil War series by Altsheler absorbed my attention. Those school library series were so old that my Dad had read them when he was a kid. My interest in the Civil War has continued into old age...thanks in part to the school library.
Oh my God. I read the Mushroom Planet books (or at least, some of them) when I was a kid. But that was a thousand years ago. I must find them and re-read them.
Never read The Mushroom Planet books but, from all appearances, I probably would've enjoyed reading them. I did
love The Borrowers and still think of them when my stuff goes missing.
Another one of my favorites was A Wrinkle In Time.
I have never heard of either of these books?? And I lived at the library as a kid. I loved books.
I was into Judy Bloom, poetry (Emily Dickinson) Victoria Holt, and can't quite remember the other stuff I used to read. But I was reading stuff more advanced than my fellow students. I devoured books.
PJ 1: Yes, I remember the teacher's name, too. I've never read Nutmeg, now I need to find it.
PJ 2: Come to realize it, there is science fiction you happen to like!
Laura: Yeah they were great.
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