The kernel of the story popped into my head one day as a vision of a large and pompous bird diving out of a window, tripping on the sill, and crashing into a rose arbor below. I began writing it in the late 1940s when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley. ' David and the Phoenix was my first book. Preview included, of Time at the Top, also written by Edward Ormondroyd.

The education had to be combined with offensive and defensive measures against a Scientist who was bent on capturing the Phoenix, but the two projects together involved exciting and hilarious adventures for boy and bird. The Phoenix found a great deal lacking in David's education-he flunked questions like 'How do you tell a true from a false Unicorn?'-and undertook to supplement it with a practical education, an education that would be a preparation for Life. This was David's first sight of the fabulous Phoenix and the beginning of a pleasant and profitable partnership. The most astonishing thing was that the bird had an open book on the ground and was reading from it There stood an enormous bird, with a head like an eagle, a neck like a swan and a scarlet crest. Included is a Foreword he wrote in 2000 for this Purple House Press editionĭavid knew that one should be prepared for anything when one climbs a mountain, but he never dreamed what he would find that June morning on the mountain ledge. It's the only authorized edition which supports the author, Edward Ormondroyd. The vanquished scoundrel returns, with sinister plans.This 1950s classic makes a wonderful read-aloud for the entire family. Domineering cousin Jane forbids more meetings. Their parents meet and don't fall in love. She and her new best friend Victoria Walker just know that when their parents meet it will be love at first sight, and the two families will become one.īut nothing happens the way it should. Shaw thinks, until I can get her to a doctor. His daughter Susan must be mad Only a girl suffering from hallucinations would make a request like that, on top of a wild story about a good witch, an elevator that travels to 1881, a vanquished scoundrel, a dug-up treasure, and a distressed nineteenth-century family named Walker. 'You want to take me back to the nineteenth century, to marry somebody there?'

Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd