Review Thursday: Children's Books

The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster by David Conway (2009)

Little Miss Muffet is not only bored with her nursery rhyme, but she can do without the scary spider. To add a bit of variety to her life, she sets off to see if she can find a new rhyme that will suit her better. Instead she wreaks havoc on, among others, “Hickory Dickory Dock”, “Sing a Song of Sixpence”, and “Hey, Diddle Diddle”. None of them agree with her idea of a comfortable, painless, classy rhyme and the ensuing chaos sends her back to her tuffet. This will appeal to sophisticated Mother Goose graduates (1-3rd grade) who will appreciate a parody of familiar Mother Goose rhymes or for those who might be in need of a lesson in the grass not always being greener on the other side.

The Three Little Tamales by Eric A. Kimmel (2009)

Taking the advice of a runaway tortilla, three little tamales escape before they get eaten at the local Texas restaurant. Building their homes out of, respectively, sagebrush, cornstalks, and cactus each has a run in with Senor Lobo. Just as in the original, The Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf gets his just desserts and the audience gets a nice sampling of Spanish words, defined in a glossary at the beginning of the book. Variants such as this one keep folklore vibrant. They are extremely useful to teachers looking for multiple versions, as well as just being a flavorful addition that begs to be shared with a group.

Mascot to the Rescue by Peter David (2008)

Sixth grader Josh Miller is obsessed with the Captain Major comic books, and not only because they are so exciting. He has begun to notice that everything that happens to the superhero’s Mascot happens to him. When he finds out that Mascot is going to be killed off in the series, he stops at nothing to try to reach the creator of the Captain Major series so that he can save Mascot and, he is convinced, his own life. The clever design incorporates different typefaces to relate Josh Mascot’s adventures and includes comic pages within the text. Perfect for comic/graphic novel fans who are being pushed (by adults) to read novels, this is a rip-roaring page turner that no boy (and few girls) will turn down.