Hickory Dickory Dash by Tony Wilson and Laura Wood
Scholastic Press, 2018. ISBN 9781743811160
Mother Mouse - the one in the rhyme, the one that climbed the
clock at one, then ran back down - is frantic with worry and in a
desperate hurry to find her two bold sons. They had been
playing outside in the moonlight when the cat pounced quite
unannounced and they scarpered for safety. Now Mother
Mouse is searching the house for them with the cat hot on her tail.
Where can they be? They are not in the playroom or the
kitchen; not the pantry or the garage or even the backyard.
Every room in the house is visited in this desperate dash, as
wherever she searches the cat is there, ready to pounce but being
bamboozled each time either by mouse savvy, swiftness or
circumstance.
Finally, exhausted and sobbing after two hours of searching, Mother
Mouse sits on the verandah almost without hope - and then she has an
idea . . .
Even if this hadn't been selected for the 2018
National Simultaneous Storytime it would have been an
automatic hit with a wide range of readers. As with his first
book, The Cow
Tripped Over the Moon, Wilson has drawn on a familiar nursery
rhyme and given it new life with his own twist and message of
perseverance and the lengths a parent goes to for the love of their
children. Clever rhymes move the story along at a dashing pace and
with the cat in hot pursuit, the reader wonders if this will have a
happy ending. As well as the suspense there is also humour -
the cat's fate in the nursery will produce a LOL moment - as each
time Mother Mouse narrowly escapes a horrible fate. Laura
Woods' illustrations use so many different perspectives that we can
feel Mother Mouse's fear as well as using light and shade cleverly
to bring the house at midnight alive and put critical elements
in focus.
Suggestions
for using the story as part of NSS 2018 are available but as May 23
draws closer there are bound to be more and more available as it
lends itself to many facets of the curriculum, including
maths. But even without formal curriculum-related activities,
this is just a rollicking read that is likely to become raucous as
the children are drawn into to its almost vaudeville-like
humour. Watch out, Mother Mouse!
See Tony Wilson's invitation to NSS here.
Barbara Braxton