I use Heckedy Peg to challenge my kindergarten students to figure out how the mother identifies her children before I read the page telling how she does it. It makes a great reading skill lesson. The story, taken from a sixteenth century game still played in England today, describes how seven children named for the days of the week are promised gifts by their mother, who is going to the market. The children, in turn, promise not to open the door but are duped by a witch, who turns them into delicious morsels to eat. The distraught mother tracks them to the witch's cottage and is offered a chance to save her family, but only if she can identify each child by name.
Milk wants pitcher.
Don Wood's masterful oil paintings are suffused with glowing colors of the English countryside contrasting well with the dark grays and browns that surround the witch's environs, and his portraits of the children, their mother, and the crone are sure and true. The inherent drama of the story, combined with the haunting images the art provides, gives the picture book a timeless quality.