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Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose (review)

2007; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 61; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/bcc.2007.0793

1558-6766

Deborah Stevenson,

Publishing and Scholarly Communication

Reviewed by: Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose Deborah Stevenson Dillon, Leo Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose; written and illus. by Leo and Diane Dillon. Harcourt, 200752p ISBN 978-0-15-205676-6$17.00 Ad 3-6 yrs The veteran illustrating team has taken an unusual approach to nursery rhymes, collecting here a couple of dozen rhymes that feature numbers or counting, including familiar standards ("Baa Baa Black Sheep") and verses from less-thumbed areas of the anthologies ("From Wibbleton to Wobbleton is 15 miles"). The collection isn't all that thematically useful, since the numbers increase only vaguely and erratically as the book progresses, and the illustrations often skip opportunities for including countable items, a particularly odd omission in the old counting crows rhyme of "1 for anger,/ 2 for mirth . . . " Conceptual issues aside, the illustrations are a deliciously fantastical carnival, with processions of Carrollianly weird creatures marching across a benignly neutral beige backdrop. Theatrical fancy is suggested in the tendency toward masks and fake noses, but the animated condiment containers, people with zebra heads, and flock of four-and-twenty tiny human-footed blackbirds would be wonderfully weird even before wardrobe got to them. It's that strange dreamy world of nursery-rhyme drama and strolling magical players that's really arresting in this volume; focus on the vision rather than the numbers, and let the little ones count what they will as they pore over the exotically inhabited stage. Though an explanatory note describes the Dillons' principles of selection and organization, there are unfortunately no source notes on the rhymes. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois