Pop! Goes the Nursery Rhyme
words by Betsy Bird
pictures by Andrea Tsurumi
Union Square Kids, coming in March 2025. 56 pages.
Review written November 19, 2024, from an Advance Reader Copy.
Starred Review
This is one of those delightfully silly picture books that simply begs to be read to a child. Full disclosure: I’ve served on a committee with Betsy Bird and have read her blog for years, so I consider her a friend.
The idea for the book is simple, and a note at the back reveals that it springs out of her family’s traditions in reading nursery rhymes. The book is a series of nursery rhymes, beginning with Pop! Goes the Weasel, but when it’s time for the last line of each other rhyme – the weasel pops out there as well.
And to make it complete, we’ve got a fussy secretary bird overseeing the action and hysterically scolding the weasel at every turn.
The idea is simple, but illustrator Andrea Tsurumi’s execution brings it to brilliance. I love the exuberance of the weasel popping out and the visible frustration of the secretary bird.
This host starts relatively calm, progresses to confused, and has a lovely page with a total breakdown:
That’s it!
That’s IT!
No more weasels!
No weasels in the sky
or in cakes or rolling down hills or any of that!NO.
MORE.
WEASELS.Just do a rhyme without a weasel in it. Just one!
PLEASE!
The next rhyme – “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” progresses over eleven pages before the grand Pop! – with tension building all the way (and the thought bubbles of the bird adding to that tension). [And can I just say that showing a bird getting a popsicle for “Pick up sticks” and throwing the sticks away for “Lay them straight” is absolutely brilliant?]
But it all ends happily with all the animals from earlier in the book showing up and celebrating the weasel.
As it says in Jon Scieszka’s blurb on the back, I really do need to find a kid and read this book to them.
afuse8production.slj.com
andreatsurumi.com
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/pop_goes_the_nursery_rhyme.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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