The Land of Green Ginger

This beloved classic is a funny, clever, and original novel that opens with Aladdin - now Emperor of China - trying to decide what to name his new son, a child who won't stop talking and is already far too articulate for his own good. The Genie of the Lamp announces that Abu Ali should be the child's name and that his destiny is to rescue the magician who created the Land of Green Ginger - a sort of fabulous floating garden - and then turned himself into a Button-Nosed Tortoise by mistake. Abu Ali is told he is the only one who can find the peripatetic island, locate the Button-Nosed Tortoise, and reverse the spell. And so begins a series of adventures that invoke a memorable cast of characters, some despicable, some feckless, and some (no surprise) beautiful and feisty.

It's all here - Flying Carpets, Green Dragons, Magic Phoenix Birds, Boomalakka Wee, the dysfunctional infant son of the Genie of the Lamp, the displaced mouse who was supposed to have been a donkey, even Omar Khayyam himself. It all adds up to a fantastical tale of adventure and mayhem, fabricated by the screenwriter of The Wizard of Oz and illustrated by the inimitable and beloved Edward Ardizzone.

The Land of Green Ginger was first published in 1937, revised and expanded in 1966, and republished again in 1975, the text on which this edition is based.