Monster Goose: A Magic Shop Book - Hardcover

Judy Sierra; Jack E. Davis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0152020349 ISBN 13: 9780152020347

Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books, 2001

Synopsis

A gruesomely funny parody for ages 4 and up.

Old Monster Goose has turned Mother Goose's world of nursery rhymes inside out! Here she presents twenty-five deliciously disgusting new poems, filled with rodents and maggots, zombies and ghouls, spiders and, of course, monsters. Remember King Cole? That terrible troll washes his feet in the toilet bowl. And poor Mistress Mary, her garden's quite scary--its killer potatoes ate all her tomatoes and now are out looking for Mary! 

From the bestselling author of Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems and the popular illustrator of the Zack Files comes a zany book that has everyone talking:

About this title

About the Author

Judy Sierra has been writing laugh-out-loud, read-aloud picture books for 25 years. She has worked with some of the cleverest illustrators, like Marc Brown, Melissa Sweet, J. Otto Siebold, Will Hillenbrand, and two-Caldecott Award winner Stephen Gammell.
 
Judy's books are for ages four to eight. They aim to stretch children's vocabularies, tickle their funnybones, and extol the virtues of kindness, perseverance, friendship, and the joys of a life filled with books.
 
"I try to create stories and rhymes that will entice children ages four to eight," she explains, "but I know that picture books are shared across generations. So I alwasy add a bit of sly humor and wordplay for adults. I'm especially pleased when an online reviewer says they don't mind reading my books again and again."
 

Judy Sierra lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Bob and their library-card-carrying poodle, Keiko. 

JACK E. DAVIS is the illustrator of the popular Zack Files series, as well as picture books including Bedhead and Music Over Manhattan. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Reviews

Gr 4 Up-Dark humor buffs or those who giggle at the gross will be roaring over Sierra's wonderfully crude and macabre take on 25 familiar nursery rhymes. Tamer ones like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Slug" may be shared with the younger set, but many, like "Cannibal Horner," need more maturity for full appreciation. Each rhyme is a winner ("Jack Sprat/Ate some fat/And drank some gasoline./He lit his pipe/And in one swipe/Invented Lean Cuisine"), made even more hilarious through illustration. Davis employs acrylics and colored pencil on watercolor paper to construct toothy cartoon characters that include a mad-scientist-eyed Mother Goose typing away on her laptop computer, a green cannibal "Eating a people potpie," and Addams Family-type characters. Your problem with this book will be keeping it available to students since teachers may hoard it for themselves.

Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Sierra (There's a Zoo in Room 22) and Davis (Bedhead) replace storybook characters with their ghoulish alter egos in this silly-scary Mother Goose knockoff. Every spread presents one revised rhyme and pictures the comical doppelg„nger of a familiar figure. In "Mary Had a Vampire Bat," a fiendish girl frightens her classmates with her pet: "She brought him out for show-and-tell;/ The teacher screamed and ran./ And school was canceled for a week,/ Just as Mary planned." Green-skinned "Cannibal Horner" chomps off his own thumb ("A tasty young morsel am I!"), and the usual mouse is upstaged in "Slithery, dithery, dock,/ The snake slid up the clock." Sierra invites a sing-along in "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Slug" and "The itsy-bitsy spider/ Climbed up the warthog's snout," and she turns a song of sixpence into an even less appetizing yarn: "Sing a song of sea slime, sewer gas, and sludge./ Four and twenty wharf rats dipped in mocha fudge." Davis, working in acrylics and colored pencil, crowds his illustrations with monsters, vermin and gross gags. But he indicates the verses' humor by giving the characters diabolical ear-to-ear grins, shifty eyes and skulky postures. The Goose has been spoofed before, but this volume strikes a nice balance between goofy and ghastly. Ages 5-8.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Ages 5-8. Kindly Mother Goose gets a makeover in this hilarious spin on classic nursery rhymes. The sing-song rhythm and appealing nonsense are still here, but a new cast of creepy, scaly, ghoulish characters are the subjects: little "Cannibal Horner," "Mary and her vampire bat," "Young King Cole" (a terrible troll), the "old zombie who lived in a shoe," and so on. Most of the rhymes successfully follow the beat of the originals, so children can chant gleefully along. The gross-out humor in Davis' wonderful drawings will also delight kids: raucous monsters, bug-eyed and laughable, explode from the pages, and icky, well-defined details (snot dripping from noses and body parts floating in pie) will pull children in for a closer look. Perfect for rowdy Halloween read-alouds, this will have young ones singing "a song of sea slime" and perhaps encourage them to create their own subversive versions of old standards. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0152020349
• ISBN 13: 9780152020347
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 56