TIME FOR A TALE
by Dugald Steer & illustrated by Elisabeth Moseng
Scheherazade as a goose? Steer follows up Just One More Story (1999) with four more retold folktales, presented in small illustrated booklets glued to the pages of a framing story. Seized by a fox, a goose puts off her demise with a series of not-exactly-canonical tales: a kazoo-playing “Pied Fox of Hamelin” rids a town of a plague of ducks; Ali Baa Baa (another fox) literally fleeces a gang of big bad sheep; a fox prince finds a princess who doesn’t care how many peas are in their bed; and after singeing a bad-tempered fox “Three Little Chicks” in a house of bricks go on to live happily ever after. So does the goose, for by the final tale’s end, she’s put her captor to sleep, and is last seen, in Moseng’s bright, cheery cartoons, dancing exuberantly away from the fox’s lair. To get the full comic effect here, children will need to know the originals—but even those who don’t are apt to enjoy the novelty format. (Folktales. 5-8)