The Night of Wishes: Or the Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion

by Michael Ende, Regina Kehn (Illustrator), Heike Schwarzbauer (Translator), Rick Takvorian (Translator)

Overview

This thrilling New Year’s Eve tale of sorcery and suspense is like a “goofy Paradise Lost for middle schoolers” (New York Times Book Review).

Comic fantasy, clever wordplay, and slapstick shenanigans from the bestselling children’s author of The Neverending Story and Momo!

It's New Year’s Eve at the Villa Nightmare but Beelzebub Preposteror is in no mood for celebration. As the Shadow Sorcery Minister, Preposteror has a duty to perform a certain number of evil deeds in service to the Minister of Pitch Darkness. But this year, to his horror, he’s nowhere near meeting that quota. Preposteror has all but given up when who should make an unexpected visit but his aunt, the witch Tyrannia Vampirella. She has come with a diabolical proposal that just might be the solution to Preposterer’s dilemma: together they will brew the fabled Notion Potion, “one of the most ancient and powerful evil spells in the universe,” and their every evil wish will be granted.

The only thing that stands in their way is a most unlikely team—a cat named Mauricio di Mauro and a raven known as Jacob Scribble, who have just hours to thwart the plans of their sorcerer masters and save the world from destruction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681372488
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	64,848
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Michael Ende (1929–1995) was born into an artistic family in Bavaria, Germany. As a young man during the Second World War, he joined the anti-Nazi resistance rather than enlist in the army, as his teenage classmates were then being required to do. After the war, he finished high school and enrolled in drama school, hoping for a career as a playwright and actor. For the next few years he worked in regional theater and wrote plays and cabaret scripts. He also met his future wife, the actor Ingeborg Hoffmann. Ende found surprise success with the 1960 publication of his first children’s book, Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver. He would go on to write many plays, essays, poems, and books—including Momo (1973) and The Neverending Story (1979)—which have been translated into more than forty languages and sold millions of copies around the world. He lived with his first wife in Italy for sixteen years until her death, and traveled extensively in Japan with his second wife, Mariko Satō, who was also his Japanese translator.

Heike Schwarzbauer and Rick Takvorian have collaborated on two translations of books by the German literary critic and novelist Christa Wolf, Accident: A Day’s News and What Remains and Other Stories.

Regina Kehn has illustrated editions of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, as well as books by Michael Ende, Daniil Kharms, Cornelia Funke, Otfried Preussler, and Franz Kafka, among others. She is based in Hamburg, Germany.

Editorial Reviews

On New Year's Eve, Maledictus Maggot, bailiff to His Excellency the Minister of Pitch Darkness, arrives in the laboratory of Shadow Sorcery Minister Beelzebub Preposteror, to remind Beelzebub that he is behind on his contract to wreak havoc on the world, and that if he does not make good before midnight, His Hellish Excellency will ``foreclose.'' In order to avoid this fearsome fate Beelzebub, together with his aunt, Tyrannia Vampirella (who has also been threatened with ``foreclosure''), set out to brew the eponymous Notion Potion, a powerful punch that will grant them their every wish. Meanwhile, Beelzebub's cat Mauricio and Tyrannia's raven Jacob get wise to the plot,stet comma/eed and launch a desperate quest to stop their masters and thereby save the world. Ende ( The Neverending Story ) has brewed a potent dose of comic fantasy, bubbling over with clever wordplay and slapstick incidents, and spiked with verse. Although the prose (or perhaps the translation from the German) is not always graceful nor idiomatic, sheer momentum and the raw power of Ende's inventiveness are sufficient to carry readers all the way through this extravaganza. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 4-6-- Poor Beelzebub Preposteror. It's New Year's Eve and despite being an ``up-to-date, state-of-the-art sorcerer,'' he has fallen woefully behind in fulfilling the terms of his contract with his Excellency, Satan. The Minister of Pitch Darkness has granted Preposteror ``extraordinary powers'' on the condition that the magician annually render extinct 10 species of animals, pollute 5 rivers, kill 10,000 trees, and generally visit mayhem on Mother Nature. Unless Preposterer meets his quota by midnight, Beelzebub's bailiff, a creature as unpleasant as its name, Malidictus Maggot, is threatening to foreclose. Preposterer has no choice but to join forces (reluctantly) with his aunt, a wicked witch named Tyrannia Vampirella. Unfortunately, this plot summary makes the book sound much better than it is. It is truly never ending in its plodding expositions, painfully forced humor, clumsy dialogue, and one-dimensional characterization. `` `If you can get enthusiastic about something,' '' one character notes, `` `then do it--and if you can't, then go to sleep.' '' Nighty-night . . . . --Michael Cart, formerly at Beverly Hills Public Library

School Library Journal

"Good confronts evil in a comic adventure spiced with rambunctious wordplay and deepened by allusions to the world’s real afflictions. Clever and highly imaginative." —Kirkus Reviews

"A potent dose of comic fantasy, bubbling over with clever wordplay and slapstick incidents, and spiked with verse." —Publishers Weekly

“Envy the parents who get to read it aloud at bedtime, facing the challenge of voicing larger-than-life characters…Ende revels in zany details and little asides. The tone of amused horror is well sustained in this playful translation…Amid the gags comes meaning, particularly when a cat arrives at a new understanding of his life, and when we witness the destruction of nature. It all ends in an operatic aria. And why not? Michael Ende also likes to keep his readers thinking.” —Eileen Battersby, TLS

From the Publisher