*Starred Review* PreS. Nina Crews' clear, beautiful color photographs and computer manipulations bring children close-up to people like them. In this modern Mother Goose, she uses computer tools to combine photos of joyful kids in her Brooklyn neighborhood with all kinds of scenarios, realistic and wild. In "Hey diddle diddle!" a brooding cat holding a violin watches a boy running on the sidewalk, while a silver spoon looms over a wooden fence and a cow walks in the air above a full moon. In contrast, the illustration for "Pat-a-Cake" is homey and real: two girls clap hands in a front of a bakery window. The child's sense of being small in a world of giants is beautifully captured in the double-page spread of tiny kids jumping in a giant shoe. Realism, of course, has never been part of the Mother Goose nonsense drama, but preschoolers will enjoy seeing kids like themselves in pictures that make the familiar rhymes part of imaginative fun on the city sidewalk, where girls and boys come out to ride their scooters and bikes, play ball, and dream.
Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Preschoolers will enjoy seeing kids like themselves in pictures that make the familiar rhymes part of imaginative fun on the city sidewalk, where girls and boys come out to ride their scooters and bikes, play ball, and dream.” (Booklist (starred review) )
“Brimming with infectious joy.” (Horn Book (starred review) )
“Mother Goose’s timeless rhymes are quite at home in this new setting.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )
“A fresh and welcome contribution.” (School Library Journal (starred review) )
“This gathering of common and not-so-common rhymes will be a hit with young readers and pre-readers in any setting, urban or otherwise.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) )