Pop Corn and Ma Goodness

Pop Corn and Ma Goodness are going about their way when a rainy day and a slippery path cause them to take a tumble - right into one another. The rest, as they say, is history. The smitten couple marry, build a house, start a farm, defeat a bear, get a hound dog, and have children. The seasons pass and their family flourishes...

This brief précis does little to capture the charm of Pop Corn and Ma Goodness, which netted illustrator Robert Andrew Parker a Caldecott Honor in 1970. Edna Mitchell Preston's text is more of a song than a story, with plenty of sounds words - it begins: "Ma Goodness she's coming a-skippitty skoppetty / skippitty skoppetty / skippitty skoppetty" - and a kind of down home feeling that I found very charming. Many show more reviewers appear to have been put off by it, but I think it would make a good read-aloud, if sung in the right way. The watercolor illustrations from Parker are rather dark, but also lovely. I have encountered his work before, in such titles as The Green Isle and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: The Iroquois Story of Creation, and although I wouldn't describe it as a personal favorite, it is always engrossing. Here it worked very well with the text, I thought. Recommended to picture-book readers who enjoys somewhat offbeat sing-song stories, as well as to fans of Robert Andrew Parker. show less

ICarl Sandburg?á(I assume they mean?áRootabaga Stories?áespecially) and I can see that, what with the nonsense words, the strong rhythm, the homage to the rural life that makes for strong families and a strong nation. I'd really have to be in a special frame of mind to appreciate the extreme simplicity, though: any one page represents the whole....?á"

this is an odd one. Didn't care for it very much.