The Mural Master

by Adrienne Jones, David Omar White (Illustrator)

The mural master's art crosses space and time, carrying four youngsters on a strange adventure to rescue the master's friend from a land of terrifying beasts and carnivorous trees.

Genres: Fiction

249 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Jones was born Adrienne Applewhite on July 28, 1915 in Atlanta, Georgia; attended UCLA, 1958-59 and UC Irvine, 1972; worked as an office and managerial worker, cattle rancher, and with youth groups; a free-lance writer and novelist, she is the author of many books, including: Ride the Far wind (1964), Another Place, Another Spring (1971), So, Nothing is Forever (1974), The Hawks of Chelney (1977), The Beckoner (1980), Whistle Down a Dark Lane (1982), A Matter of Spunk (1983), Street Family (1987), and Long Time Passing (1990).

At the age of seven, she moved to California with her family. Her home life and schooling in Beverly Hills instilled an early passion for books and story-writing. A yearning for adventure and a real love for the natural scene carried her on explorations of California's desserts, canyons, mountains and coastline. After her marriage, she lived in the hills near Laguna Beach with her husband.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to re-read this after a chance mention of the word "massif", which caused me to say "what, like the Hooneran Massif?" and nobody knew what I meant. (Google has zero hits, except for me raising the question.) (Correction: if you search books.google.com, you'll find the book in question.)

This is an early portal fantasy that I was fond of as a kid. On the reread, it's a whole lot shorter than I remember, and more unrealistically optimistic about the notion of overthrowing an evil king with zero bloodshed. But it stands up pretty well anyhow.

Carrie and her cousin Digby meet up for their regular summer vacation in the nowhere town of Pawthany-on-Ilse. This year, however, a stained-glass shack has popped up, labelled "Mural Shop". The (only somewhat hobbit-like) Mural Master invites them inside, along with two other visitors, and -- if I say they wind up painted into a corner, you'll hit me, right? Magic country, greedy king, beautiful daughter, prophecy, evil magician, monsters, adventure, true love, all in due order. (Note: prophecy is not actually prophetic and its import is rather nicely explained.)

The magic land is the best part here (okay, except that it's named "Pawthania", but ignore that). It's vivid, full of high-concept scenery, and surprisingly not beholden to D&D fantasy tropes. (Even the short hairy-footed Mural Master turns out to be his own kind of thing, and certainly no Bilbo clone.) The brushstrokes (sorry) are broad but distinctive. Same goes for the protagonists. The group is both less white and less stereotyped than you might imagine for 1974; Tonio Dias is the storyteller -- favoring Poseidon, rather than anything culturally Hispanic -- and Leo Lopopolo (of some Caribbean ancestry) winds up the de facto team leader. Carrie could be described as "spunky" and she screams a *couple* of times, but everybody gets their turn in the doing-things spotlight. I suspect the book never got a second edition, so you'd have to go trawling the used-book networks, but I recommand it anyhow.

[Capn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inside flap reads:
"One summer day at Pawthany-On-Isle," Carrie said to her cousin Digby, "is the same forever and always." But this day was not to be the same for very long. On this day Carrie and Digby would meet two new friends and all of them would be lured into the world of Til Pleeryn, the Mural Master, by a mysterious invitation.

A bird to sing, a dark haired maid,
A teller of tales, and a son of kings

Til Pleeryn, a fantastic person from another place in time, needed the four young people to complete his plan, and Til Pleeryn, for good or for evil, was the master of his craft. His murals transformed walls into forests, ceilings into night skies, and the solid floor beneath their feet to a treacherous swampy path. His art connected two worlds, and then cut off the known and familiar, leaving the four friends to wander across a nightmare landscape of terrifying beasts and carnivorous trees. There they must remain, pawns in a dangerous plot, but not quite without power.
For those who ever fantasized about stepping into a picture, THE MURAL MASTER will doubtless provide frightening second thoughts. But those who dare to go on will surely value the companionship of these four friends, each of whom makes an individual contribution to their common problems.
In THE MURAL MASTER Adrienne Jones has written an exciting fantasy where the problems and solutions of another world have application to our own.
//

I am writing this in bed via the app because I just couldn't put this book down this evening as it came to its (somewhat rose-tinted geopolitical) conclusion.

5 stars is a lot, and arguably I love this as well as I love The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which I probably only gave 4 stars to (ask me how I like a 5-star system with a minimum vote of 1 star... flawed, and intentionally so!). But 5 stars it is getting, because:

1. It's long out of print
2. It's scarce and obscure
3. It is WORTHY of reprinting and will hold up in 2024

As I said, on the app, so will amend this over coffee in the morning, but - we have a group for Forgotten Vintage Children's Lit We Want Republished (https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/... ) and THIS SUCKER has to go high on that list: underrated female author in SFF; female MC; interracial couple and kiss; very positive black male role model (predates Wakanda*, but those lovely vibes!), and a very, very original (and timeless) juvenile fantasy story. *edit: Ah, perhaps not. The first appearance of Black Panther was in 1966.. well, predates the enduring Chadwick Boseman, RIP

It's so original that it makes reviewing it difficult for me - I don't have much to compare it with, except other epic portal fantasies. It's also an American author, and, at least by my reading habits, you don't find many good ones that aren't British. So it even has a different 'flavour' to it. Protagonist Carrie is abhorrently rude and spirited by UK standards of the era, for starters!

It's not perfect - 5 stars is a round-up - but it is so unique I feel the need to laud it.

Four young Beyonders came here,
Though much against their will,
All painted through a cellar wall,
By Mural Master Til.

The four Beyonders are cousins Carrie (fiesty and argumentative), her older cousin Digby (that dude at the campfire with a guitar...), Tonio (who is either a victim of human trafficking/modern slavery, or is just telling another of his very captivating stories!), and Leo Lopopolo, with his unpronounceable name, who lopes onto the seaside scene from the ugly, dirty city seeking employment.

Young's got magic, Young's got heart,
Also courage, also smart.
Young's got laughter, stories, singing,
Spirits fresh and free and winging

The best bits for me were "down the Well" (much scarier than it sounds - also known as The Long Leap of death), and riding Zylboks up and across granite cliffs. The biting flowers were a nice touch, too.

Republish this. Seriously.

[Patricia Voigt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A bird to sing in the ruby cage,
A dark-haired maid of tender age,
A teller of tales who's sailed the sea,
A son of kings. Then Kreegeth is free."

I rediscovered this one recently after going through a box of old books. Thank goodness I never got rid of it! Another Christmas gift from Dad, when I was a kid. And another book that set me on the road to becoming a lover of fantasy fiction. This one is from the "Kids from our world get magically swept away into another and become heroes" school, a la Chronicles of Narnia, but it's fast-paced, exciting, and surprisingly dark. It's also a bit open-ended, which I found disturbing as a child, but now it seems appropriate.

Cousins Carrie and Digby spend the summer every year in the seaside hamlet of Pawthany-on-Ilse, where nothing ever changes...until one day, it does. Overnight, a strange shop appears, and the proprietor is an unsettling little man named Til Pleeryn. Til introduces himself as a great painter of murals, and invites Carrie and Digby to a special exhibition of his new masterpiece, the Illuminated Mural. The two cousins decide to attend, and meet two other young teenagers who have also been invited to the special showing: Tonio, a Portuguese boy given to tall tales, and Leo, a handsome and gracious young man with a knack for leadership.

Too late, the four teenagers learn Til Pleeryn's secret: Til is not a man, but a creature called a troge, and his paintings actually come to life. Til's "Illuminated Mural" becomes the doorway by which he spirits the characters into Pawthania, a magical and dangerous country.

However...mischievous and untrustworthy as Til is (think Loki with a paintbrush), he is not the true enemy. The leader of the troges, Kreegeth, has been taken hostage by the cruel king of Pawthania, and in order to secure Kreegeth's release, Til has to bring four "Beyonders" into Pawthania via his magic. Moreover, the "Beyonders" have to conform to certain specifications--one has to be a good singer, one a fine storyteller, one must have a royal bloodline, and one...well, let's just say it's sufficient that she be young and sweetly accommodating. (One of the things I enjoyed, as a young girl, was Carrie's reaction to the role she is expected to play--sharp-witted and hot-tempered, Carrie Beckett is no doormat!)

The young Beyonders are expected to be pawns in King Dalgur's power games, and rally support from disparate and hostile factions of Pawthania. But Til has his own cards to play, and besides, he isn't a monster--he has no wish to lead innocents to a pawn's death. He chose Carrie, Digby, Tonio, and Leo precisely because they are young, and as he puts it, "Young's got heart, and young's got it's own magic." He believes that if the four work together, they could turn the tables on the king, the dark wizards of the ruling Council, and every other danger Pawthania might throw their way.

This isn't a classic like the Narnia or Oz books, and some of the worldbuilding seems a little too pat, but it's a fast-paced adventure story with colorful, memorable (and in the end, loveable) characters. Well worth reading if you can find it.