The Quangle Wangle's Hat

Fanciful creatures, including the Stork, the Duck, the Owl, the Frog, and the Fimble Fowl come to build their homes on the Quangle Wangle's commodious hat.

PreSchool--Grade 3-- Stevens uses Lear's nonsense verse to display her fresh imagination and humor in this lively picture book. The Quangle Wangle Quee is a tree-dwelling creature obscured by an enormous beribboned hat. He is lonely, but not for long: a procession of animals (some real, some imaginary) discover him, seeing the hat as a possible home. A pair of canaries are the first to arrive, saying, "May we build a nest on your lovely Hat? Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that!" By the end of the book, the hat is more built up than one would believe possible, with sheds, nests, shacks, mailboxes, TV antennae, pots of geraniums, and clotheslines. The poem itself is not one of Lear's best works, for the rhythm is not as suited to reading aloud as, for example, "The Jumblies" or "The Owl and the Pussycat." Yet Stevens' use of inventive detail and deadpan silliness is as delightful as it was in her version of The Three Billygoats Gruff (HBJ, 1987). The unkempt and chaotic quality of the illustrations suits both the cumulative and fanciful natures of the poem. --Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, Ill.
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