Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
First edition
Author Mem Fox
Illustrator Julie Vivas
Country Australia
Language English
Genre Children's picture book, poetry
Published 1984 (Omnibus Books)
Media type Print (hardback)
Pages 32 (unpaginated)
ISBN 9780949641168
OCLC 19618469

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge is a 1984 children's picture book by Mem Fox. It is about a boy, Wilfrid, who helps an elderly friend, Nancy, to regain some of her memory. In 1998, American company Weston Woods Studio released a film adaptation of this book, narrated by the author with music by Ernest Troost.

Basis

The name of the boy who is the central character is that of Fox's father, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, who, with his wife, Nancy, was sent to Zimbabwe as a teaching missionary.

Reception

School Library Journal wrote: "The illustrations - splashy, slightly hazy watercolors in rosy pastels - contrast the boy's fidgety energy with his friends' slow, careful movements and capture the story's warmth and sentiment". Alzheimer's Australia found it "sensitively written". A review by the NYU Langone Medical Center called it "a magnificently written and illustrated story about communication".

Fox herself has noted the politically loaded aspects of the story, in having a white hero, separating the elderly from their families, and having a focus on nuclear families.