Mother Goose of Pudding Lane

by Chris Raschka, Vladimir Radunsky (Illustrator)

Overview

Celebrated picture book creators Chris Raschka and Vladimir Radunsky offer one possible answer to the age-old question: Who was Mother Goose?

We all love to hear Mother Goose rhymes and riddles. But did you know that there was a real Mother Goose who lived in Boston more than three hundred years ago? In 1692, Elizabeth Foster married a widower with ten children. His name was Isaac Goose, and after they married, Elizabeth became Mother Goose. She and Isaac had four more children together, and to help her care for such a big and boisterous family, Mother Goose sang songs and lullabies and made up rhymes and poems. Her nursery rhymes and stories were published at a print shop on Pudding Lane in Boston, though no copies of her book exist today. In a book featuring some of Mother Goose’s best-loved works, Vladimir Radunsky’s bright and humorous illustrations and Chris Raschka’s rhyming poems tell the little-known story of the Goose children, Isaac, and Elizabeth herself — the Mother Goose of Pudding Lane.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763675233
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 11.20(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Chris Raschka is an author and illustrator of many books for children. He is the illustrator of The Hello, Goodbye Window by Norton Juster and the author-illustrator of A Ball for Daisy, both Caldecott Medal winners. He also illustrated four poetry collections by Paul B. Janeczko and is the author-illustrator of The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra. Chris Raschka lives in New York City.

Vladimir Radunsky (1954–2018) illustrated many books for children, including On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne, and was the author-illustrator of such books as The Mighty Asparagus, You?,and I Love You Dude.

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/27/2019

This collaboration, completed before Radunsky’s death in 2018, suggests that the real Mother Goose was Elizabeth Foster, a young woman from 17th-century Boston who married a widower named Isaac Goose. A printer on Pudding Lane is said to have published a collection of the lullabies and verse she wrote to amuse their sizable brood, though no copy survives. Raschka writes his own nursery rhyme for the couple (“Elizabeth Goose/ Met/ Isaac Goose/ Who loved her from the start”), which winds throughout the volume. On each spread, Raschka’s lines are followed by traditional Mother Goose rhymes—some well-known, others more obscure. Radunsky’s joyous, dreamlike gouache figures cavort across the spreads; pencil drawings and ghostly naïf-style images appear here and there, too, as if a toddler had scribbled on the pages. Comically dressed in bonnets and tricorn hats, the people and their animals sometimes share equal status—a gentle- man in a wig kisses a dog (“Sneeze on a Tuesday, kiss a stranger”), a poodle yearns for a bulldog, and a dog and a goat contemplate a baby in a cradle. Happily, instead of concentrating on nostalgia, the longtime collaborators pursue the verses’ unadulterated silliness, creating a strange and wonderful effect. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Whimsical gouache figures pop off bright backgrounds, vying for attention with black-pencil doodles. Some pages are filled with small, busily detailed pictures, such as portraits of all 14 children, others offer floating images, and a few feature two-page spreads. Some rhymes will be familiar, other won't, but the story of the Goose family should be new for most readers. This is a delightful offering, and, like previous titles from Raschka, should generate a lot of interest. Be prepared.
—Booklist (starred review)

Radunsky’s joyous, dreamlike gouache figures cavort across the spreads; pencil drawings and ghostly naïf-style images appear here and there, too, as if a toddler had scribbled on the pages...Happily, instead of concentrating on nostalgia, the longtime collaborators pursue the verses’ unadulterated silliness, creating a strange and wonderful effect.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Published posthumously, Radunsky's gouache-and-pencil illustrations depict the Goose family, other people, and anthropomorphic animals; they have a jovial, sketchy quality to them, befitting the lively cadence of both Raschka's verse and the familiar nursery rhymes.
—Kirkus Reviews

This title should be purchased where his work and that of Raschka have been popular. An entertaining bit of esoterica for select, primarily adult, readers.
—School Library Journal Online

From the Publisher

08/30/2019

Gr 3 Up-Just who was the real Mother Goose, who gave us all those rhyming verses? Raschka proposes here that she must have been Elizabeth Foster of Boston. "In 1692, she married old Isaac Goose from the city, a widower with 10 children." The author speculates on this brief biographical bit in four pages preceding the book's title page. In this creative scheme for the main text, his own brief comments about the Goose marriage and family life introduce two or four pages of selected Mother Goose and other traditional rhymes. Set in large red type in the upper left-hand corner of the spread, Raschka's poetic quips, some rhyming with the previous one, could be assembled into a single poem. "Elizabeth Goose/and/Isaac Goose/Had children quite a few." Here just one old verse, the account of the old woman living in a shoe, demonstrates the point. Radunsky's gouache and pencil sketches scatter humans and animals across pages in varying colors and textures. A series of small portraits fills some views—Elizabeth Foster, Isaac Goose, and each of their 14 children, or Gregory Griggs and his 27 wigs, for instance. Many views include messy little pencil sketches among painted figures. In some busy views the figures are an odd match with the text, but there are many fun details throughout the book. Readers might approach this as just another Mother Goose collection. While most of the rhymes are familiar, some seem less so in the phrasing. Raschka provides no author note or acknowledgements of sources for the factual bits or the rhymes. A publisher's promotional piece notes that Radunsky died prior to the book's publication. This title should be purchased where his work and that of Raschka have been popular. VERDICT An entertaining bit of esoterica for select, primarily adult, readers.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston

School Library Journal

2019-06-16
Inventive verse and playful art combine in an origin story of Mother Goose herself.

Frontmatter offers possible backstories about the enigmatic Mother Goose, leading to an introduction of one Elizabeth Foster who lived in Colonial-era Boston and married widower Isaac Goose. Raschka's poetic text provides a biographical sketch of Elizabeth Foster Goose, within which he thematically arranges well-known Mother Goose rhymes. For example, he introduces Elizabeth and Isaac as they fall in love and marry, accompanying that part of his text with nursery rhymes about courtship and matrimony. The text also explains that between stepchildren and those born to the couple, Elizabeth was Mother Goose to 14 children. Readers must connect the dots to deduce that this real woman may have originated the rhymes now known to generations, and it's a shame the text fails to explicitly illuminate historical context. His art published posthumously, Radunsky's gouache-and-pencil illustrations of the Goose family, other people, and anthropomorphic animals have a jovial, sketchy quality befitting the lively cadence of Raschka's verse and the familiar nursery rhymes. Unfortunately, the depiction of what appears as an all-white world of Goose's Colonial Boston offers ahistorical exclusivity. Ultimately, it's a book as playful and cryptic as many a Mother Goose rhyme.

A dainty dish that needed just a bit more proof in the pudding when it comes to historicity. (Picture book. 3-8)

Kirkus Reviews