Mother Goose Picture Puzzles (review)

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Reviewed by: Mother Goose Picture Puzzles Hope Morrison Hillenbrand, Will. ad. Mother Goose Picture Puzzles; ad. and illus. by Will Hillenbrand. Cavendish, 2011. [40p]. ISBN 978-0-7614-5808-1 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R 4–6 yrs. The titular “picture puzzles” are actually rebuses in this playful collection of Mother Goose rhymes, which includes twenty illustrated verses in rebus format. As an added bonus, every icon used in the rebus poem is included somewhere in the illustration with a written label, essentially providing a key to the rebus itself. Most of the included tales are familiar members of the Mother Goose family, while a handful are less common (and some, such as “Yankee Doodle,” aren’t Mother Goose at all); the collection’s large font and copious illustrations support the book’s use as both an introduction to the rhymes and a comfortable visit with familiar stories. Humans and anthropomorphized animals intermingle in the mixed-media illustrations, where Miss Muffet is a cat and Old King Cole is a lion; mottled textures add softness to the elements, but there’s a playful solidity to the figures. Perhaps the most engaging aspect of the pictures is the foreshadowing incorporated into the tales; nearly every illustrated rhyme includes a minute detail/character/image that is then featured in the next (Little Bo-Peep is pictured on a distant hillside in the preceding “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” Humpty Dumpty is shown riding a unicycle in the background of “The Little Bird,” etc.), and browsers will have great fun tying the stories together. The large-format pages lend themselves well to sharing with a crowd, and burgeoning readers will also get a kick out of spending some time alone with the collection. Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois