Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
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, Wilfried 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.