The Charles Addams Mother Goose

""Girls and boys, Come out to play, The moon does shine As bright as day. Come with a hoop, Come with a call, Come with a good will, Or not at all."" "Addams, master "New Yorker" cartoonist and black-humor prankster par excellence, has thrown tradition to the winds and taken matters into his own bedeviled hands, transforming those endearing Mother Goose characters into gleefully wicked and outrageous beings -- from the farmer's wife, seen sullenly cutting off the tails of those three blind mice with an electric knife, to Little Miss Muffet, scared half out of her mind by the size and leering grotesqueness of that big spider who sat down beside her. "That clammy Addams touch never fails to hit its mark. In his macabre, funny way, he has given Mother Goose a dimension even she would shudder at -- but only for a moment, because the wit and candor of it all are too irresistible and insanely comic to take exception to. Addams's style and originality make his tampering with tradition completely and hilariously acceptable." "-- Chicago Tribune"

Review :
Art SpiegelmanEveryone knows what you mean when you refer to an "Addams house," an "Addams family," or an "Addams situation." In fact...it's tempting to say we live in an "Addams world." Harry BlissMother Goose must be turning over in her grave -- how perfect. Roz ChastCharles Addams doesn't "have" to alter the original Mother Goose because his drawings take us directly into these little rhymes' creepy, dark heart -- the heart we always knew was there from the first time we heard about the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. Stephen King"Charles Addams's Mother Goose" is cheerful and gruesome in equal measure, a book for children and parents to treasure together. Scary? Yes. Just scary enough to produce a flurry of nervous bedtime giggles. Hurrah for this rediscovered treasure! Art SpiegelmanEveryone knows what you mean when you refer to an "Addams house," an "Addams family," or an "Addams situation." In fact...it's tempting to say we live in an "Addams world." Harry BlissMother Goose must be turning over in her grave -- how perfect. Stephen King"Charles Addams's Mother Goose" is cheerful and gruesome in equal measure, a book for children and parents to treasure together. Scary? Yes. Just scary enough to produce a flurry of nervous bedtime giggles. Hurrah for this rediscovered treasure! Roz ChastCharles Addams doesn't "have" to alter the original Mother Goose because his drawings take us directly into these little rhymes' creepy, dark heart -- the heart we always knew was there from the first time we heard about the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.