The West Australian newspaper reviewed The Magic Trumpet
on October 19 1946:
The happy collaboration of Mary and Elizabeth Durack has
produced many attractive volumes but none more aesthetically pleasing than The
Magic Trumpet (Cassell & Company Ltd London, New York, Melbourne 1946).
This is a story in graceful verse by Mary Durack and illustrated with the
vivacious originality we have come to expect from her sister, Elizabeth. The
verse, which has a rippling music that is full of a new-world faery atmosphere,
tells of a black boy born to an aboriginal mother who
was half afraid to own him
As he lay upon his paperbark
She sighed for him, and cried for him
A little while because
She knew him for a strangeling,
A brown fairy changeling:
But he may be mortal yet, she said
And he very nearly was!
Although he grows like a mortal, he remains a sort of
dark-skinned Peter Pan, dodging the responsibilities of mortality until he
becomes the shadowy spirit of the land.
The illustrations in sepia and in full
colour are photo-lithographed and reproduced with admirable fidelity. Combining
bold design with clever draughtsmanship, they swirl through the pages and
interpret the story in a way that cannot fail to delight
JKE
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Present-day responses to this early review are welcome.
try info@elizabethdurack.com
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The Magic Trumpet was the last of the unprompted collaborations between the sisters. Henceforth, while they remained forever mutually supportive, their goals and careers diverged. A few co-productions continued into the 1960s but in effect, by the mid 1940s the original compulsion to collaborate with words and pictures had gone.
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