What Really Happened to Humpty? (Nursery-Rhyme Mysteries) - Hardcover

Ransom, Jeanie Franz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580891098 ISBN 13: 9781580891097

Publisher: Charlesbridge, 2009

Synopsis

A scrambled mess . . .

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Or--as his brother Detective Joe Dumpty thinks--was he pushed? This case isn't all it's cracked up to be. Suspects are plenty (as are the puns) in this scrambled story of nursery rhyme noir. Was it Little Miss Muffet? There's something not right about her tuffet. Or could it have been Chicken Little, who's always been a little cagey? Or was it the Big Bad Wolf, who's got a rap sheet as long as a moonless night? Joe's on the beat and determined to find the truth.

Readers of all ages will delight in the word play and hilarious illustrations in this mystery of what really happened to Humpty Dumpty on that fateful day.

About this title

About the Author

Jeanie Franz Ransom is the author of several books, including WHAT PARENTS DO WHEN YOU'RE NOT HOME and GRANDMA U. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Reviews

Grade 1–4—When Humpty falls off the wall, his brother Joe, a detective in Mother Gooseland, is convinced that he was pushed. Thus begins the unraveling of the mystery of who did the dastardly deed. All of the characters use cell phones and some drive cars in this long and complicated tale. There are a lot of egg jokes, and wordplay abounds. In the end, Little Miss Muffet and the Big Bad Wolf go off to jail for their crime. Now Joe Dumpty has more work to do as the Dish just ran away with the Spoon and Bo Peep's sheep are roaming. The illustrations are done in watercolor, with pen and ink. The drawings are various sizes and often there are multiple frames per page. Pictures are detailed, and many contain speech balloons. This is a text-heavy story that will tickle the funny bone of readers old enough to get the jokes.—Ieva Bates, Ann Arbor District Library, MI
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*Starred Review* Hard-boiled detective Joe Dumpty’s ovoid body is encased in a ’40s-era belted brown trench coat topped with a fedora, and his clipped statements will remind older readers of TV’s Joe Friday. Here, cleft-chinned Joe recounts how he cracked one of the toughest mysteries in Mother Gooseland: the assault with intent to spill the yolky interior of his older brother, Humpty. Joe tells how he examined the crime scene before the ambulance arrived (pulled by all the king’s horses and filled with all the king’s men). He recovers some evidence from under Miss Muffet’s tuffet, interviews the shell-shocked Humpty in the hospital, and follows the trail of evidence to one very huffy Big Bad Wolf, dressed to kill in gangster pinstripes. This enchanting send-up of old-time detective stories will have older readers in stitches, while younger readers will get caught up in the clever recombination of fairy-tale characters. The illustrations, done in watercolor and pen and ink, are as filled with puns and crowded with humorous detail as the story—even the typeface looks like it was pounded out by an old Remington typewriter. This CSI: Mother Goose is a winner. Grades 1-4. --Connie Fletcher

Edition details

• Publisher: Charlesbridge
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580891098
• ISBN 13: 9781580891097
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32