THE REAL DADA MOTHER GOOSE

Deconstructed nursery rhymes entertain and delight in this mischievous endeavor.

It’s not every nursery-rhyme collection that pays homage to the Oulipo school of thought (more specifically, Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (1947)), but then again, few have Scieszka’s keen eye for the absurd. Here, he applies a Dada sensibility to Blanche Fisher Wright’s classic 1916 publication The Real Mother Goose. Taking six of Wright’s original nursery rhymes, illustrations and all, Scieszka and partner in crime Rothman reimagine each poem in six different ways. From haiku and recipes to N+7 codes, pop quizzes to plays on Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” and much more, the rhymes are inventive and laugh-out-loud funny. Rothman plays with the original Wright illustrations, stretching, cutting, and reworking them in countless ways. This one is squarely aimed at an audience of older kids, and teachers and parents will revel at the extensive backmatter that includes everything from histories (of Morse code, Esperanto, spoonerisms, and more) to explanations of anagrams, hieroglyphics, rebuses, and Dadaism itself. All told this book is a marvelous anarchic celebration of “re-telling, re-illustrating, and re-mixing.”

Stand aside, fractured fairy tales; neoist nursery rhymes are the new name of the game. Creativity incarnate.