Charles Addams' Mother Goose - Softcover

Addams, Charles

4.16

281 ratings by Goodreads

9780671961183: Charles Addams' Mother Goose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671961187 ISBN 13: 9780671961183

Publisher: Aladdin

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"Girls and boys,

Come out to play,

The moon does shine

As bright as day.

Come with a hoop,

Come with a call,

Come with a good will,

Or not at all."

"Addams, master New Yorker cartoonist and black-humor prankster par excellence, has thrown tradition to the winds and taken matters into his own bedeviled hands, transforming those endearing Mother Goose characters into gleefully wicked and outrageous beings -- from the farmer's wife, seen sullenly cutting off the tails of those three blind mice with an electric knife, to Little Miss Muffet, scared half out of her mind by the size and leering grotesqueness of that big spider who sat down beside her.

"That clammy Addams touch never fails to hit its mark. In his macabre, funny way, he has given Mother Goose a dimension even she would shudder at -- but only for a moment, because the wit and candor of it all are too irresistible and insanely comic to take exception to. Addams's style and originality make his tampering with tradition completely and hilariously acceptable."

-- Chicago Tribune

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Review:

New Yorker cartoonist (and creator of the altogether ooky Addams Family characters) Charles Addams tampers with tradition to great effect in The Charles Addams Mother Goose, first published in 1967, and now reissued as a deluxe edition. While Ms. Goose's original nursery rhymes remain unchanged, Addams casts his spell on a selected few poems with new visual twists. A less wholesome, more anemic Mistress Mary has never been seen, and her bare-lightbulb-lit basement garden of mushrooms and heads of "pretty maids all in a row" is quite unsettling. Jack Sprat and his wife are, of course, cannibals. Nine-day-old porridge is disgusting... so naturally a witch is the porridge preparer, and goblins are the only ones who would like it "nine days old." Humpty Dumpty's story, on the other hand, feels a little cheerier than the original: rather than leaving the egg irreparably broken, the illustrator shows a dinosaur hatching! Tee Addams, Charles Addams's wife, writes an insightful introduction for this lovely, oversized edition, and the book closes with a scrapbook of family photos and pictures of Addams's earlier work. Kids familiar with Mother Goose's rhymes will be delighted (and perhaps only slightly terrified) by Addams's playful interpretations. (All ages) --Karin Snelson

About the Author:

Chas Addams was the creator of the "Addams Family" cartoons, which first appeared in The New Yorker and were the inspiration for the popular The Addams Family television show and movies. He has been honored with the Yale Humor Award (1954) and a Special Edgar Award for "Cartoonist of the Macabre" from the Mystery Writers of America. Addams died in 1988 in New York City.

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