Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty?

July 16, 2012
“There are eight million stories in the forest. This is one of them,” announces bullfrog Binky, the plainclothes cop who investigates situations like Humpty Dumpty’s demise and a witch’s disappearance in “Hansel and Gretel.” Binky starts his day with a call from Mrs. Bear, reporting a robbery. Once Goldilocks confesses, Binky unsentimentally reports, “They’ll feed her three meals a day where she’s going.” Another incident involves “that sweet girl who cleaned for the Seven Dwarfs.... Boy, what a knockout!” When Snow White is poisoned, suspicion falls on the royal judge of a beauty pageant. Following each procedural, a red “case closed” stamp appears across a picture of the jailed or handcuffed culprit. Levinthal, best known for his photography, nails the tone of the Dragnet-style escapades that make up his picture book debut, and Nickle’s (Hans My Hedgehog) obsessively detailed acrylics have a sinister edge that suits the mood. His panels are somewhat awkwardly framed in unadorned borders, and the no-frills, sans-serif typeface does little to complement the images or deadpan narration, but readers should still be tickled by these
noirish retellings. Ages 4–8.

August 15, 2012
In language reminiscent of old-time-radio detective stories, Officer Binky narrates a few of his cases, which will be very familiar to young readers. A call from Mrs. Bear sends Binky to his first crime scene: eaten porridge, broken chair, rumpled bed. "It could only be one dame: Goldilocks! I nabbed her trying to make her getaway....They'll feed her three meals a day where she's going." A missing-person report has Binky driving to the Deep Dark Woods to investigate a woodcutter and his two children. It doesn't take long for him to determine it was self-defense. An omelet leads the diminutive frog cop to Humpty's killer, while the crime lab helps him solve the case of the poisoning of a beautiful girl by a beauty-pageant judge. The final case is less a mystery than an investigation into the cause of an explosion/earthquake. Luckily, some golden eggs are the hard evidence Binky needs to get the lieutenant to believe what happened. The acrylic artwork suits the noir atmosphere, somber colors and tension-filled scenes alternating with humorous details that match the tongue-in-cheek text. The one quibble is that Nickle's people are rather stiff, with oddly shaped heads and strange facial expressions. Still, there is humor to appeal to all ages here. Levinthal's children's-book debut lacks the laugh-out-loud silliness that is Margie Palatini and Richard Egielski's mashup The Web Files (2001), but this will find an audience. (Fractured fairy tales. 5-9)

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September 1, 2012

Gr 1-4-These open-and-shut cases of nursery-rhyme mysteries are narrated by Officer Binky, a toad with a manner reminiscent of Joe Friday's on the old Dragnet TV show, with his typical "Just the facts, Ma'am" style. In the first of five short stories, the officer gets a call from Mrs. Bear, who is upset because someone broke into the family home, ate their porridge, sat in their chairs, and slept in their beds. Based upon the evidence-a blond hair and an empty bowl, a piece of blue material caught in a chair that has seen better days, and a disheveled quilt on a bed-Officer Binky deduces that it "could only be one dame: Goldilocks!" When questioned, she admits to being the intruder. The intrepid cop assures readers that "they'll feed her three meals a day where she's going, and she'll have plenty of time to rest." Hansel and Gretel, Humpty Dumpty, Snow White, and Jack and the Beanstalk are all similarly treated in eight pages or less with the police officer quickly solving the mysteries behind the well-known tales. Illustrations are presented in a variety of sizes and set off by frames in different colors. At the end of each segment, a red stamp reading 'CASE CLOSED' is superimposed over Nickle's richly colored acrylic artwork. The tongue-in-cheek telling of tales will tickle the fancies of children familiar with the originals.-Maryann H. Owen, Racine Public Library, WI

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2012
Grades K-3 A little wisp of a toad named Binky has seen it all, or so he thinks. The black-suited detective (Pinecone Division) gets called to finger the perp in a series of cases, from the blonde porridge-eater troubling the Bear family and the kids who took down the candy house deep in the woods to the piggie who lost his temper with Humpty and an apple-poisoning, mirror-obsessed judge of a beauty pageant. Kids will certainly be familiar with all these stories, and Levinthal supplies just enough of a twist with each one to make them fresh again without necessarily reinventing any of them. What'll really stop kids in their tracks, though, is Nickle's acrylic artwork. His sophisticated touch is as equally suited to the dramatic, black-and-white re-creations of the crimes as it is to the cheeky scenes of Binky gumshoeing about with various woodland creatures. Hook this one up with Margie Palatini's The Web Files (2001) and Jeanie Franz Ransom's What Really Happened to Humpty? (2009) for a soft-boiled shamus storytime.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013
Officer Binky, a laconic and rumpled frog detective, investigates the events of fairyland: "The Three Bears" is a breaking and entering; "Snow White" is an attempted murder; Hansel and Gretel present a self-defense plea. Levinthal has a good time with scene-of-the-crime details, forensics, and witness testimony. Nickle's dramatic, hard-edged paintings, with their hint of grotesque misanthropy, are just the ticket.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

September 1, 2012
Once again folk tales and nursery rhymes prove their flexibility and resilience. The premise here (similar to that of Steve Metzger and Tedd Arnold's Detective Blue, rev. 9/11) is that the events of fairyland are crimes: "The Three Bears" is a breaking and entering; "Snow White" is an attempted murder; Hansel and Gretel present a self-defense plea. The detective on these cases is Binky, a laconic and rumpled frog cop, a warty Sam Spade. Levinthal has a good time with scene-of-the-crime details, forensics, and witness testimony, and the fun is contagious. The idea provides rich illustrative potential, and Nickle's dramatic, hard-edged paintings, with their hint of grotesque misanthropy (reminiscent of Anthony Browne), are just the ticket, making especially effective use of varied page design and a low, froggy point of view. This is a world where big creatures loom, but Binky demonstrates the power of logic and a good deadpan one-liner. Of the pig who pushed Humpty Dumpty: "He was on his way to a different pen." sarah ellis

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)