Back in ""the good old days"" when fairy-tale characters roam the forest, a boy named Jeremiah Obadiah Jackenory Jones is sent off after the robbers of his grandma's tarts. Jeremiah meets with protestations of innocence from three bears, five duded-up gorillas playing cards on a riverboat, and a wolf who only eats grandmas; by the time he discovers that the culprit is a little girl named Goldilocks (readers will have guessed it sooner), he's run into a dinosaur reading Krazy Fat, a mad hatter at tea, a crafty croc who has swallowed a clock, a frog prince, and more. The Ahlbergs seem to assume that merely throwing all these characters together is entertainment enough. It isn't.