Meannie is a fabulous witch, mean, ugly and with a most terrible diet of lizards. Having arrived in Australia during the gold rush she has now settled in the Australian Desert “where there is heaps of dust and plenty of hot sunshine.”I love the description of Meannie “She wears the usual black raggy dress down to her prickly ankles, but it is coated with thick red dust that dribbles into mud pools when it rains, and makes stains like tomato sauce on her singlet. She also wears the usual witch’s hat. But it has corks tied around the brim to chase the blowflies away and a point that has wilted in the heat…. Meannie’s nose is always an ugly, red, peeling thing that glows in the dark and scares the bats silly.”
Bindii and Mike (names invented for a story written in 1987 long before the Steve Irwin and his famous daughter) also live the Australian desert. They have a pet lizard called Thorny. He is an Thorny Devil and very rare. Meannie has never tasted a Thorny Devil and so she hatches a plan to kidnap him and add him to her cooking pot. Thank heavens for the resourceful and quick thinking Bindii and Mike. Thorny is saved and justice triumphs.
This is a terrific Australian book. I am sure it would be out of print now but I plan to read it to my Second Grade students this year along with the tape I have read by Max Gillies which is delightful. If you like lots of adventure, fast fun and short chapter books with marvelous illustrations (Terry Denton) then look for this little book in your library.
8 comments:
Oh my goodness! *falls over* I have been searching for a copy of that recording for so many years. Decades, even. I adored that audiobook, the story felt real and alive. Where in the heck did you find it?
Apologies for the random comment, I was just so stoked when I read your post.
Sorry I don't have this anymore. It was a cassette tape made in 1988 by ABC books. There are six copies listed on Trove as held in Australian public libraries but you would need a cassette player to listen assuming it is for loan from the library. There are 3 listed in NSW, plus one in WA, one in ACT and one in Queensland. There is also one listed at the University of Sydney.
Oh my goodness! *falls over a little bit* I have been searching for a copy of that tape for such a long time. Decades, even.
The story felt incredibly vivid to me as a kid, like a living, breathing, totally mesmerising thing. I loved it so much.
Where in the heck did you find a recording of it?
(Apologies for the random comment, your post just made me super exited and happy.
Thank you so much for that information, I exhausted my VIC leads, I shall definitely look into that. That's awesome, thanks again.
Thank you Pamela shrapnel for this unforgettable australian story & Max Gillies brings the story alive - a wonderful storyteller especially this series..my daughter still loves Meannie and the Min Min played on car cassette - 30 years on, this cassette tape still enthrals the young at heart
I still have my original cassett tapeof this.
Can I buy someone’s original copy. I would love to get my hands on this?
My parents recorded this off the library cassette whenI was a small child because I kept wanting to borrow it from the library. I only ever knew the story as Witches Kinder, because that’s what dad labelled the tape. I have kept that master recorded tape al these years & hubby is just now converting it to mp3 for me F consequently just found out the actual story name from this blog!
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