Little Bo Peep and Her Bad, Bad Sheep: A Mother Goose Hullabaloo (Fiction Picture Books)

My little girl loves this book.

Remember the "Fractured Fairytales" episodes on the old "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoon show? This book reminded me of that. There was almost always a deadpan, put-upon princess who offered dry commentary on the storyline and talked back to the narrator, who himself offered droll versions of the tales. Well, that's in general what you get here.Bo Peep has lost control of her naughty sheep, and they're wandering around creating havoc. The big joke is that they are wandering around through just about every other Mother Goose story you could imagine. Those stories, in turn, are going a bit off the tracks.The fun here is that this is set up as a sort of "Where's Waldo" puzzle. Each two-page spread is one big scene with characters from all of the other rhymes scattered all over the pages. There are no separate cartoon panels as such. After you look at everything on one spread you turn the page and each individual tale has progressed a bit more. You keep turning the pages and by the end the sheep are back home and all of the other Mother goose stories have been wrapped up, (one way or the other), as well.The upshot is that you can follow just the Bo Peep sheep story, or you can follow all of the stories at once, or you can play a sort of seek-and-find trying to figure which stories which characters go to. Some of the nursery stories are a bit obscure, but at the end of the book the author has provided complete ryhmes for all of them. I'd suggest starting at the end and reviewing the poems, and then starting the book with all of the characters fresh in mind. On the other hand, if you're reading a book like this to or with someone you probably have all of that stuff in your head already.In any event, this is fresh, funny, amiable and high energy good-humored fun, which makes for an active and cheerful read. Sounds good to me,(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)