Mother Goose Picture Puzzles

January 31, 2011
To market, to market comes a new collection of nursery rhymes—jazzed up by a rebus format. A large trim size gives Hillenbrand (Don't Slam the Door!) ample room to create cheerful scenes in which familiar characters cavort. But his playful tweaks in visually depicting both verse and action make this outing special. Each uncluttered, mixed-media spread features a rhyme (mostly well-known classics, including Jack and Jill, Miss Muffet, and Humpy Dumpty), which appears in large font with pictures in place of some of the words. The same rebus pictures appear—and are labeled—in the main art on the page, so readers can make connections between words and images. Gently humorous touches abound: King Cole is a jolly-looking lion, and his fiddlers three are none other than the three blind mice; Wee Willie Winkie is wee indeed—he's
a mouse. This volume works as a nifty guessing game for early readers (some of the rebus pictures will be more obvious than others), and the beloved rhymes and detail-rich artwork should earn the project an enthusiastic audience. Ages 5–8.