MOTHER GOOSE AND THE SLY FOX

In a variant on Grimm's more familiar ""The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids"" (no source given), a fox poses as Mother Goose to gain entrance to her house, where he bags six of her seven goslings. The seventh helps the mother pursue the miscreant and cut a hole in the bag, which is then filled with stones. Kinder and gentler to the end, this version has Fox plunge to the river's bottom--but later escape with his cubs. Conover extends her tale with details like a do-nothing mouse who lives with the geese, but her most interesting embellishments are in the elaborate illustrations. Choosing storybook Holland as a setting, she is generous with charming details: Mother Goose making lace; the fox presiding over a shell game on the banks of a canal; a Vermeer-like interior at the Goose home; busy tradesanimals and shops; birds nesting in quaint houses in a willow tree; even a fish scholar in the river's depths. A well-enough-told stow, but a visual feast.