What Would Mama Do? - Hardcover

Never mind that geese typically live in flocks and fly south for chilly months: in Enderle and Tessler's (Six Sleepy Sheep) picture book, Mama Goose sends her only child, Lily, to restock the pantry for the winter. As Lily waddles from shop to shop, purchasing different weights of various items, she grows anxious over Faraday Fox, who is following her, making remarks about goose dinner. "Oh! Oh! What would Mama do?" Lily wonders, stalling the overly polite predator by making him carry her increasingly heavy packages. But despite their plentiful use of key words ("At the vegetable stand, Lily bargained for a bushel and a peck"), the authors don't provide a sense of just how big a bushel is, nor of what foodstuff is measured this way?and Demarest's (see Plane and Ship, reviewed above) workmanlike watercolors of unlabeled jars and paper bags fail to clarify matters. Even with the endpapers, which offer a factual list of weight systems, this book just doesn't measure up. Ages 3-6.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 5^-8. On her way to town to do the winter shopping, Little Lilly (she's a goose) is pursued by Faraday Fox. "OH! OH! WHAT WOULD MAMA DO?" It seems that Mama would outwit, er . . . weigh down her nemesis, and that's just what Lilly does. She purchases pounds, gathers gallons, and hands the parcels to the obliging Fox. Although kids (and many adults) will be unfamiliar with the measurements (firkin, hogshead, furlong), the story's energy, rhythm, and rhymes ("What's a catty? Something fatty?" ) should keep them involved. The cartoon-style artwork is vigorous, sometimes extending the text. With equivalences featured on the endpapers, the book's greatest advocates may be math teachers, who could have a lot of fun with this. Julie Corsaro