Author | Georgia Byng |
---|---|
Cover artist | Amy Ryan |
Country | UK, US |
Language | English |
Series | Molly Moon |
Genre | Children's novel |
Publisher | HarperCollins, Macmillan Children's Books |
Publication date
|
2002 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover, paperback) |
Pages | 371 |
ISBN | |
OCLC | 52146106 |
Followed by | Molly Moon Stops the World |
Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism is a 2002 children's novel by British author Georgia Byng. It is the first instalment in the Molly Moon six-book series. Amber Entertainment and Lipsync Productions produced a film adaptation, which was released on April 11, 2015.
Molly Moon, an orphan at Hardwick House Orphanage in Briersville, England, is living a "boring and plain" life with her best friend Rocky Scarlet, another orphan. She is described as being plain looking with a large "potato" nose, wobbly knees and green eyes. She is usually beaten down upon by Ms. Adderstone, the woman in charge of the orphanage, and Hazel, a snobby orphan girl. During a cross-country race at school, Molly and Rocky have a fight and Molly storms away to the town library. As she walks in, she finds a man yelling at the librarian about a book he ordered, but ignores him. While looking in a curious compartment of the restricted section, she finds a book on hypnotism, placed in the wrong section because the "H" was ripped off the spine. Intrigued, she steals it and sneaks out of the library. She takes it to the orphanage to read it.
She fakes being ill so that she can study the book better. Curiously, she finds that chapters 7 and 8 ("Voice-Only Hypnosis" and "Long Distance Hypnosis") are missing. Not long after her discovery of the book, she learns that Rocky has been adopted and taken to America with his new family. Determined to see her friend again, she gains the actual ability to hypnotize from the lessons in her book, first successfully hypnotizing the orphanage dog, Petula. Later on, she is able to hypnotize both Ms. Adderstone and their orphanage chef Edna. Using her ability, Molly wins a large sum of money from a local talent competition, by hypnotizing the crowd into believing that she is a talented singer and dancer. She uses the money to fly to New York City, taking Petula with her. Before leaving, she buys a large gold pendulum, where the mysterious professor from the library learns about her, after he bought some anti-hypnosis glasses.