Humpty Dumpty Lived Near a Wall
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
"Wickedly, subversively brilliant." - Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
"This book cracked me up and left a smile on my face (spoiler alert)" - Adam Rubin, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Dragons Love Tacos
Looks like the wall has finally met its match. This classic tale gets a modern twist with a Humpty Dumpty for a new generation.
"Humpty Dumpty lived near a wall..." begins this well-known fable. But this time Humpty is ready for battle, with a secret mission and a touch of mischief. Can all the King's horses and all the King's men help put Humpty together again? Or maybe the mission, no matter how small, is simply to question the point of a wall.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dizzyingly detailed black-and-white illustrations draw readers into a dystopian take on an eggy tale. Hughes's Humpty lives in a walled kingdom ruled by a profit-mad king: "All the king's subjects/ lived life in dismay/ All day long busy,/ with no time to play." Christopher's simple rhyming text is dense with possibility of walls as a symbol, of "self-serving" kings but the plot is allusive and murky. Though Humpty scales the edifice and crashes, and the king rushes out photos trumpeting the wall's victory, "On broken eggshells, pushed in a great pile.../ one piece was on top,// that piece had a smile." Christopher's inky drawings render fairy-land grotesques with needle-sharp lines and indicate that Humpty's defiant act sparks ladder-building in a variety of places. Ages 10 up.
