In case you were wondering just how deep it’s possible to go in the analysis of a seemingly simple children’s story such as this one, Carolyn Daniel has much to say about Possum Magic in her book Voracious Children: Who eats whom in children’s literature. First she points out that this is an example of a Quest Narrative. The consumer above is describing, nay lamenting, that they as parent are required to have a dialogic reading experience with their own child. Possum Magic has been set to orchestral music and performed three times by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, but not recorded. It has also been made into a highly successful musical which has been touring Australia every two years or so, but which is now in its final performances. (Sept. 2013) Possum Magic takes us on a fantastical journey to cities around Australia to find the food that makes Hush visible again.

Dianne Smith (June 2000), "Awards", A Guide to the papers of Mem Fox (PDF), Lue Rees Archive, p.5 , retrieved 2 September 2021

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In 1978 I was 32. Chloë was 7. She was such an avid reader I couldn’t keep up with her passion for books so I decided, as a non-traditional student, to take a course in children’s literature to find out about as many books as possible that might interest her, particularly those that had been published since my own childhood. Beata Bowes (25 January 2018). "10 Classic Australian Children's Books". victorianopera.com.au . Retrieved 2 September 2021. Discover the wonder of Possum Magic with limited edition collector coin series". Royal Australian Mint . Retrieved 14 September 2017. Possum Magic is a classic Australian picture book by Mem Fox. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BboBeS-vhjg WHAT HAPPENS IN THE STORY OF POSSUM MAGIC

Admin (29 August 2017). "Nan Chauncy Award 2017". readingtime.com.au. Children's Book Council of Australia . Retrieved 2 September 2021. There are now a lot of Australian picture books which star local fauna. Many of them are fairly pedestrian, introducing the young reader to the names of the creatures and perhaps what they eat and their circadian rhythms, but this story is particularly well done because of the mixture of local fauna (beautifully anthropomorphised), Australian food (for humans), Australian geography and Australian dialect. Few Australian picture books manage to combine all of those things, and so Possum Magic has become for Australians like a celebration of Australia. Indeed, this is a book by an Australian, written for Australians, and there was a time when this in itself was something to be celebrated. In Fox’s story the consumption of certain foods constitutes Hush as an individual. The various foods might be said to carry certain discourses or stories about what it means to be Australian, including lifestyle, attitudes, desires, and even power relations (who gets the biggest slice?). As Hush consumes these foods, she also consumes Australian-ness and is constituted as an Australian. As a visibly legitimate Australian subject Hush embodies culture or as Foucault puts it, she is an “effect of power.” Simultaneously she is also “the element of its articulation.” Hence by her annually repeated consumption of proper Australian food/culture she confirms, for all those (child readers) now able to see her, just what it means to be Australian. it is] one of the prime effects of power that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain discourses, certain desires, come to be identified and constituted as individuals… The individual is an effect of power, and at the same time, or precisely to the extent to which it is that effect, it is the element of its articulation. The individual which power has constituted is at the same time its vehicle. Not every picturebook author can get away with this: Half rhyming, half not rhyming. But Mem Fox does:

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Mem Fox is a beloved Australian children's author, and the writer of Possum Magic. She is a professor and public speaker, though has been semi-retired since 1996. Dianne Smith (June 2000), "Biographical Note", A Guide to the papers of Mem Fox (PDF), Lue Rees Archive, p.3 , retrieved 2 September 2021 Kathleen T. Horning; Ginny Moore Kruse; Merri Lindgren (1991). "Picture Books". CCBC Choices (PDF). Cooperative Children's Book Center. p.40 . Retrieved 2 September 2021. Children's awards: Theme of book 'transcends age' " (scan). The Canberra Times. 21 July 1984. p.8 . Retrieved 2 September 2021– via Trove.

Grandma Poss uses bush magic to make a child possum (Hush) invisible so that Hush won’t be eaten by snakes. (I’m going to put aside the fact that snakes seem to ‘see’ via vibrations, so an invisibility superpower wouldn’t necessarily protect her…) But soon, Hush longs to be able to see herself again, the two possums make their way across Australia to find the ‘magic food’ (quintessentially Australian food) that will make Hush visible once more. Each year on Hush’s birthday they eat the same food ‘just to make sure Hush doesn’t turn visible again’, thereby creating a kind of mythology about why (white) Australians eat certain foods as celebration. In Fox’s narrative food is the magic that makes Hush visible. It constructs her as a subject and thus may be said to stand in, metonymically, for culture itself. For Michel Foucault culture is the magic that makes individuals visible. Following Nietzsche, Foucault argues that cultural discourses of truth, power, and knowledge distinguish between normal and deviant behaviour, thus determining individuals’ actions and constructing them as subjects. For Foucault power does not “crush” individuals; it does not need to because Possum Magic". Horn Book Guides. Media Source Inc . Retrieved 2 September 2021. one enchanting book. Jeanette Larson. "Possum Magic". School Library Journal. Media Source Inc . Retrieved 2 September 2021. A perfect choice for storytimes, but also useful for curriculum enrichment, thanks to a simplified map and glossary.To extend this idea a little further, though it is true that young children will accept almost anything in a well-written story, this is precisely the reason we need to be careful about offering them stories with a modern ideology. When there is the symbolic annihilation of non-whites and female characters, and world-views which should have gone the way of the dodo, it’s not that the child reader doesn’t notice; it’s because these ideas are being so thoroughly taken on board that the ideas themselves seem invisible. One problem. Grandma Poss can’t find the spell to make Hush visible again. And then she remembers...this particular magic requires something more, something special, something to do with food...people food. Possum Magic takes us on a whimsical journey to cities around Australia to find the food that makes Hush visible again. But Grandma Poss has trouble finding the magic to make Hush visible again and, although Hush tells her she doesn’t mind, “in her heart of hearts she did”. Eventually Grandma remembers that, “it’s something to do with food. People food—not possum food”. And she and Hush set off around Australia to find the food that will make Hush visible. O'Brien, Susie; Hodge, Regan (29 May 2022). "Popular children books deemed not culturally diverse enough". Herald Sun . Retrieved 7 June 2022. Mem Fox is Australia’s most highly regarded picture-book author. Her first book, Possum Magic, is the best selling children’s book ever in Australia, with sales of over three million. And in the USA Time for Bed and Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge have each sold over a million copies. Time for Bed is on Oprah’s list of the twenty best children’s books of all time. Mem has written thirty picture books for children and five non-fiction books for adults, including the best-selling Reading Magic, aimed at parents of very young children.

Possum Magic is a 1983 children's picture book by Australian author Mem Fox, and illustrated by Julie Vivas. It concerns a young female possum, named Hush, who becomes invisible and has a number of adventures. In 2001, a film was made by the American company Weston Woods and narrated by the author.

The foods that Grandma Poss and Hush eat are seen to be quintessentially Australian and their journey is a search for national and cultural identity as well as visibility or subjectivity. Fox’s narrative suggests that an individual’s sense of self does not arise spontaneously but is derived by literally consuming culture. By eating these significantly Australian foods Hush becomes visible and can be recognized as having a legitimate place within Australian society; she thus eats her way into culture. This reflects and supports the notion that ‘we are what we eat’ and that food narratives teach children how to be proper human subjects.