Higglety Pigglety Pop!: Or There Must Be More to Life

by Maurice Sendak (Author) Maurice Sendak (Illustrator)

Higglety Pigglety Pop!: Or There Must Be More to Life
Reading Level: K − 1st Grade

A daring imagination has woven a simple rhyme into a brilliantly original tale [about Jennie, the Sealyham terrier, who seeks Experience and becomes the star of the World Mother Goose Theatre.


  • H. 'Superb fantasy.' 'BL.
  • Notable Children's Books of 1967 (ALA)
  • 1968 Fanfare Honor List (H)
  • Best Books of 1967 (SLJ)
  • Children's Books of 1967 (Library of Congress)

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Maurice Sendak's books have been, right along, projections of concepts rather than pictorializations of plots, so that it is almost gratuitous to hail his arrival as an author; but this tidy little package, despite its size and shape, is not a picture book, nor is it, like Hector Protector an elaboration of Mother Goose for little children - there is more to life, and his supple style matches his consummate skill as an artist. "You have everything," the potted plant reminds Jennie the terrier as she prepares to leave home," and Jennie replies, "There must be more to life than having everything." What she lacks, Jennie discovers when she applies for the Job of leading lady in the World Mother Goose Theatre, is experience. As the new nurse hired to feed Baby, she is a failure, and, she isn't even eaten by the lion like the other unsuccessful nurses, but she does stick her head in the lion's mouth, and that, as someone says, is an experience! She also saves Baby by inadvertently guessing her name—Mother Goose—and it is Baby-become-Mother-Goose who appears to welcome Jennie as the leading lady in "Higglety Pigglety Pop;" the play follows (in pictures). If there is more to life than having everything, there, is also more to life than having nothing; Jennie's farewell letter to her old master is written from Castle Yonder. In synopsis, this sounds both more and less ambiguous than it is — you can't compress the reverberations into a review, and certainly not the ominous illustrations; it may by-pass some adults because Sendak speaks directly to the elastic imagination of children.
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780064430210
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
HarperCollins
Publication date
June 19, 1979
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV007000 - Juvenile Fiction | Classics
JUV039090 - Juvenile Fiction | Social Themes | New Experience
JUV002070 - Juvenile Fiction | Animals | Dogs
JUV001000 - Juvenile Fiction | Action & Adventure
Library of Congress categories
Dogs
Conduct of life

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