Enhanced by Tony Auth's wry drawings, Barry Yourgrau's middle-grade fantasy of a boy and his magical, moon-touched uncle is at once humorous and poignant, nostalgic and timeless.

"Invicius Ponticius Supalicius . . . Magilili . . . Lililiculus?"

Duncan Peckle's young life changes forever the day his mysterious relative, Uncle Dudley of the great voyages, arrives in Mt. Geranium in his battered Panama hat and old tweed coat. No sooner do Duncan's parents leave him in his bungling uncle's care than a strange package arrives and the attic guest room is overflowing with the accoutrements of magical research (and one shrunken head). For eleven-year-old Duncan, it's the start of a summer full of marvelous misadventures — from accidentally summoning goblins to reversing invisibility spells, from unleashing a love elixir to zooming around on giant bubbles through the wild night air.