Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40268 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 56 pages

From Booklist
In a rare jolly mood, the Dillons illustrate 24 traditional counting rhymes with page-filling arrays of capering animals, diminutive grotesques, and human figures wearing partial or full-head masks. The verses progress from 1,2,3, / the bumblebee to 4-and-20 blackbirds. Although the pictures generally provide literal depictions of the action, they have a sophistication that plays oddly against the simple language of the texts. The selection has its quirks, too: As I was going to St. Ives, has, perhaps wisely, been left out but not the lesser known, rather startling Charley Barley, butter and eggs, / Sold his wife for 3 duck eggs . . . . Parents uncomfortable or bored with the more child-friendly illustrations in such standbys as Rosemary Wells' My Very First Mother Goose (1996) and its many sequels might find this a more intriguing choice for sharing with their young offspring. Good to pair with Iona Opie's Mother Goose's Little Treasures, illustrated by Wells, reviewed on p.117. Peters, John

Review
The Horn Book Magazine : * "As they explain, the Dillons “offer children an invitation to...playful, energetic, magical, even at times mischievous numbers” with rhymes both well- and lesser-known, progressing “from rhymes with smaller numbers to those with larger numbers.” Thus, their selection of a couple of dozen rhymes doubles as an offbeat counting book; but their sunny, crisply rendered art does much more: in honoring the “fantastical quality of Mother Goose,” the illustrators have created a sweetly surreal space inhabited by humans (often wearing masks: it’s a false nose that the maid in “Sing a Song of Sixpence” loses to a blackbird), animals clothed or au naturel, dancing numerals, a clock with arms to ring its own alarm, a boat-rowing fish, and whimsical sizes (a tiny elf catches a huge “hare alive”). Such intriguing details broaden the meaning on every page, and if the literal-minded can’t always find precisely the number in question (“From Wibbleton to Wobbleton is 15 miles”) in the pictures, there are plenty of other clearly delineated things to count and discuss. A charming and original vision that’s also just plain beautiful: this Mother Goose belongs in the permanent canon." (starred review)

Publishers Weekly : * “A wholly original Mother Goose book, the Caldecott-winning Dillons’ collection of number rhymes is so imaginative and playful that each reading yields something new and unexpected. . . . Inventive, artistically dazzling and full of wit, this Mother Goose collection is absolutely irresistible.” (starred review)

About the Author
LEO & DIANE DILLON have together illustrated more than twenty-five books for children, including the Caldecott Medal winner Why Mosquitos Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aardema. The Dillons live in Brooklyn, New York.