George’s Marvellous Medicine was published in 1981. It is a short, funny and wonderfully anarchic story about a boy who makes an extraordinary potion for his horrible grandmother.
Eight-year-old George is left alone with his deeply unpleasant, selfish and mean-spirited grandmother while his parents are out. Grandmother criticises, complains and is generally horrible. George decides to make her a new medicine — instead of her usual brown medicine — by mixing every interesting substance he can find in the house: shampoo, animal medicines, engine oil, floor polish, and many more.
When Grandmother takes a spoonful of George’s Marvellous Medicine, she shoots up through the ceiling and keeps growing until she is enormous. George’s father is delighted — he realises the medicine could be used to make farm animals grow to gigantic size. He tries to help George recreate the formula, but George cannot remember the exact ingredients. Each new attempt produces a different (and comic) result: animals shrink, animals glow, animals levitate. In the confusion, Grandmother takes the wrong medicine, shrinks smaller and smaller, and eventually disappears entirely.