The author of Mrs. Biddlebox (2002) posits another irascible senior citizen, this one living in a big boot with only an equally irritable cat for company. The arrival of five rambunctious children to a neighboring shoe sends both scurrying to the nearest witch for a supply of “Kiddie-Be-Gone.” Unfortunately, it’s a stale batch (and she doesn’t read the instructions); suddenly, the coterie of cheerful young folk is transformed into a huddle of grumpy, querulous oldsters, “Some saggy and baggy, with moles on their skin, / Some crinkled and wrinkled, with rolls on their chin.” Manning sets this cautionary tale in a landscape of rolling hills and widely scattered shoes and cottages. The old folk are all marked by scowls beneath oversized red noses—until the old woman hastily stirs up a batch of “Kiddie-Come-Back” that restores her neighbors to a fresh-faced, “clattering, chattering, clamoring crew” of children. “Now what would that old woman do?” Well, if you can’t beat ’em. . . . Readers of Mother Goose with lingering questions about that old woman with so many children will find some answers at last, in this lively take on the traditional rhyme. (Picture book. 6-8)
