Spinster Goose: Twisted Rhymes for Naughty Children
This collection of riffs on familiar Mother Goose favorites is irresistibly sinister, combining darkly mutated rhymes with subtly surreal illustrations to delicious effect. Wheeler casts Spinster Goose as the headmistress of a reform school for naughty children and reimagines everyone from Lucy Locket to Wee Willie Winkie as her ne�er-do-well pupils. The rhymes themselves take great liberties with their predecessors and may require some practice before they trip off the tongue. But their cracked and crooked charm merits the effort. For her part, Blackall applies her typically sweet-natured style in surprising and occasionally disturbing ways (the children, for example, are all similar-looking, except that some of them, inexplicably, have animal heads). A particularly tidy, straightforward book design makes for a nice foil, against which the wicked rhymes and unsettling images really sing. Many children will love hearing these cleverly menacing verses and will love repeating them even more. Grades K-3. --Thom Barthelmess