The Magic Pudding: Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and His Friends Bill Barnacle & Sam Sawnoff

In the Australian bush, a tidy koala named Bunyip Bluegum abandons his orderly life for adventure and promptly falls in with the strangest companions a traveler could hope to meet: Bill Barnacle, a salt-soaked sailor, and Sam Sawnoff, a penguin of questionable origins. Together, they guard the most extraordinary dessert in existence, Albert, a Magic Pudding who reforms himself no matter how many times he's eaten, and who has plenty of opinions about the matter. Albert is not your typical enchantedtreat. He's grumpy, vain, and utterly unwilling to be consumed quietly. When pudding-thieves come prowling, the three friends must defend their impossible meal with cunning and courage. Interspersed with sea shanties, nonsense verses, and absurd banter, this 1918 Australian classic is less a gentle nursery tale than a rollicking comic fantasy about loyalty, appetite, and the particular chaos that ensues when dessert has a chip on its shoulder. It endures because it refuses to be saccharine, because its magic comes with attitude, and because friendship tastes better when there's something worth fighting for.