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  • Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?: And Other Notorious Nursery Tale Mysteries
  • Elizabeth Bush
Levinthal, David . Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?: And Other Notorious Nursery Tale Mysteries; illus. by John Nickle. Schwartz & Wade, 2012. [40p]. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-94595-3 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-84195-8 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 2-4.

Binky, a stout, warty police detective toad who looks like he's downed a few donuts over the years, gets the call when things go bad in the forest in this latest entry in the flourishing genre of nursery noir. The Three Bears report a housebreaking; Hansel [End Page 94] and Gretel are acquitted on self-defense in the murder of a witch; a pig chef who runs an omelet stand confesses to pushing Humpty Dumpty off the wall; Snow White is rushed to the hospital on a 911 call from a dwarf; a boy named Jack caught high-tailin' it away from a scene of devastation proves to be the hero who rescued a kidnapped Golden Goose from a giant. The stories are too underdeveloped to carry much weight, and they're not nearly as amusingly manic as episodes in Scieszka's venerable Stinky Cheese Man. Nickle's acrylic illustrations, however, are more than up to the job, with their eerie, other-worldly cast of ne'er-do-wells. Scene setting and visual characterization are aimed at kids who know the stories thoroughly and can therefore appreciate the unrepentant, blue-eyed glare of Goldilocks behind bars; the shell shard and tighty-whities wreckage of Humpty Dumpty; and the rotten teeth and distended bellies of the animals who have gorged on the witch's candy house. Readers who are just starting to question all those happily-ever-afters might find a few answers here.

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