From archive (archive)
From: menolly@garnet.berkeley.edu (Pamela Pon)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Subject: BLACK AND BLUE MAGIC, Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Date: 12 Oct 88 06:23:54 GMT




In article <2955@mit-amt> jh@mit-amt (John Underkoffler) writes:
>	The second was a wonderful story whose title I have forgotten
>but which concerned itself with a mostly ordinary boy who of course wished
>that he were not so ordinary; his mother owned a boarding house (in which
>they also lived) and his father was dead. The book spent two hundred pages
>just detailing his ordinary life. Sorry. That's not it at all. Begin again.
>His life became exciting when he did some kindness to a traveling salesman
>who turned out to be a peddler of genuinely magical wares. The stranger
>shows his gratitude by bestowing upon our hero a vial of pearly liquid;
>we learn that a drop of this salve rubbed into each shoulder causes the
>boy to sprout wings with which he then flies around and has a generally
>great time. More description would spoil the tale. Any hints?

The title is not 'The Boy Who Could Fly,' but BLACK AND BLUE MAGIC,
by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, copyright 1966.  The edition which our school used
was published by Scholastic Book Services, a division of Scholastic Magazines,
Inc., by arrangement with Atheneum Publishers (first printing: Nov. 1967).

...      Harry's first gasp of surprise turned into a great ballooning rush of
     happiness.  It was an absolutely fantastic feeling, as if his oldest dream 
     or most impossible wish had just come true.  Actually he couldn't remember
     ever having wished for wings, at least not in so many words.  Not in the 
     way that he'd wished that Mom didn't have to work so hard, that they could 
     move to a ranch, or that he could get over being so clumsy.  But now, all
     of a sudden, it was quite clear that wings were something he'd always
     wanted.  Having wings was a dream that he seemed to know all about --
     not with his mind, but in a way that was older and more important than just
     remembering.
...
-- menolly@garnet.berkeley.edu
-- Pamela Pon, 1235 Vista Grande, Millbrae, CA 94030