Sugar and Snails
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A novel twist to a classic rhyme. Who says that little girls are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice?” Or that boys are made of “frogs and snails and puppy dog tails?” What if girls were made of “boats and snails and dinosaur tails?” And little boys of “flowers and swings and bumblebee wings?”
When the traditional rhyme just doesn’t seem to fit the boy and girl visiting their grandpa, he comes up with a list of unusual alternatives. Soon the children are coming up with their own versions that challenge the old stereotypes with a whimsical list of ingredients. To add to the new quirky version are lively illustrations that beautifully capture the children’s imaginative flights of fancy. Young readers will delight in the small details of Sonja Wimmer’s vibrant art, and be inspired to think of their own silly examples of what ingredients they might be made of themselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A boy, a girl, and an elderly man presumably their grandfather deconstruct the saying that boys are made of snails and puppy dog tails and girls from sugar and spice. Tsiang (The Stone Hatchlings) opens with the three sitting around the breakfast table, but they're quickly transported into a freewheeling world of imagination as they debate the rhyme. "I don't wear dresses!" insists the girl after the man suggests that girls might instead be made of "Dresses and sweets and everything neat." (Oddly, she's wearing a dress when she makes this claim.) Soon, their ideas are flying back and forth, letting Wimmer (A Surprise for Mrs. Tortoise) run wild with the possibilities in her surreal mixed-media caricatures. "Maybe it was that boys are made of lightning and newts... and rubber rain boots," writes Tsiang as the boy, dressed like a superhero, launches skyward on a slice of toast. Whimsical transformations come fast and furious, and, although the text is framed in binary boy-girl terms, readers will sense that stereotypes and norms are dissolving with each page turn. Ages 4 7.
