About the Author

DAVID LEVINTHAL is a celebrated photographer known for his use of toy figurines and tableaux for his art. He illustrated the covers for the immensely popular, New York Times-bestselling books by Sarah Vowell-Assassination Vacation, The Wordy Shipmates, and Unfamiliar Fishes. He is also the author of I.E.D.- War in Iraq and Hitler Moves East- A Graphic Chronicle, 1941-43, among others. He has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and has been named a Guggenheim Fellow.

JOHN NICKLE is the amazing author and illustrator of Alphabet Explosion!, The Ant Bully, and TV Rex. He is also the illustrator of Judi Barrett's Never Take a Shark to the Dentist- And Other Things Not to Do and Things That Are Most in the World. The Ant Bully was made into a feature film in 2006.

Reviews

The New York Times, August 23, 2012:
"That’s the way the nursery rhyme crumbles in these humorous retellings, cast in the world of hard-boiled crime and private detectives."

The Huffington Post, August 6, 2012:
"The first children's book from the wildly creative Levinthal and I hope it won't be the last."

Booklist, September 15, 2012:
"Kids will certainly be familiar with all these stories, and Levinthal supplies just enough of a twist with each one to make them fresh again without necessarily reinventing any of them. What’ll really stop kids in their tracks, though, is Nickle’s acrylic artwork. His sophisticated touch is as equally suited to the dramatic, black-andwhite re-creations of the crimes as it is to the cheeky scenes of Binky gumshoeing about with various woodland creatures."

School Library Journal, September 2012:
"The tongue-in-cheek telling of tales will tickle the fancies of children familiar with the originals."

Gr 1-4-These open-and-shut cases of nursery-rhyme mysteries are narrated by Officer Binky, a toad with a manner reminiscent of Joe Friday's on the old Dragnet TV show, with his typical "Just the facts, Ma'am" style. In the first of five short stories, the officer gets a call from Mrs. Bear, who is upset because someone broke into the family home, ate their porridge, sat in their chairs, and slept in their beds. Based upon the evidence-a blond hair and an empty bowl, a piece of blue material caught in a chair that has seen better days, and a disheveled quilt on a bed-Officer Binky deduces that it "could only be one dame: Goldilocks!" When questioned, she admits to being the intruder. The intrepid cop assures readers that "they'll feed her three meals a day where she's going, and she'll have plenty of time to rest." Hansel and Gretel, Humpty Dumpty, Snow White, and Jack and the Beanstalk are all similarly treated in eight pages or less with the police officer quickly solving the mysteries behind the well-known tales. Illustrations are presented in a variety of sizes and set off by frames in different colors. At the end of each segment, a red stamp reading 'CASE CLOSED' is superimposed over Nickle's richly colored acrylic artwork. The tongue-in-cheek telling of tales will tickle the fancies of children familiar with the originals.-Maryann H. Owen, Racine Public Library, WI (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.