<p>This 1950s classic makes a wonderful read-aloud for the entire family. It's the only authorized edition which supports the author, Edward Ormondroyd. Included is a Foreword he wrote in 2000 for this Purple House Press edition!</p><p><br></p><p>David 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.</p><p><br></p><p>There stood an enormous bird, with a head like an eagle, a neck like a swan and a scarlet crest. The most astonishing thing was that the bird had an open book on the ground and was reading from it!</p><p><br></p><p>This was David's first sight of the fabulous Phoenix and the beginning of a pleasant and profitable partnership. 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. 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. Illustrated by Joan Raysor.</p><p><br></p><p>Preview included, of <em>Time at the Top</em>, also written by Edward Ormondroyd.</p><p><br></p><p>A quote from the author's Foreword:</p><p>"<em>David and the Phoenix was</em> my first book. I began writing it in the late 1940s when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley. 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. Somehow (I'm still mystified by the process) the bird became the Phoenix and the window became a boy's bedroom window. With that settled, all I had to do was invent what happened before and after."</p><p>-Edward Ormondroyd</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>