LITTLE MISS MUFFET

The most famous scaredy-cat of them all experiences fright after fright before finally getting to enjoy her curds and whey.

Trapani continues Miss Muffet’s story: “All through the room, / She zipped and she zoomed / And looked for a place to hide. // A mouse came to find her; / It scurried behind her. / The dainty Miss bolted outside.” From a frog in the bushes and a crow at the top of a tree to a fish next to her canoe and a moose on the shore, it’s one thing after another. Finally, she unwinds in a bubble bath before once again settling on her tuffet (here pictured as an upholstered footstool) for a snack. Readers will barely be able to contain themselves when they spy the spider climbing up the tuffet leg. Indeed, Trapani slyly inserts clues as to what might next befall the hapless Miss Muffet in her brightly colored illustrations, which humorously capture both Miss Muffet’s primness and her fright. The rhythm and rhyme are not as tight as in others of Trapani’s extended nursery rhymes—she rhymes “scuttered” with “water” and “canoe” with “out to”—but it’s still a fun romp. The back cover includes the music and the words to all eight verses.

Those with similar fears may feel empathy for Miss Muffet’s plight; others will just giggle at the improbability of it all.