Summary: Everyone
loves Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle lives in an upside-down
house and smells like cookies. She was even married to a pirate once. Most of
all, she knows everything about children. She can cure them of any ailment.
Patsy hates baths. Hubert never puts anything away. Allen eats v-e-r-y slowly.
Mrs Piggle-Wiggle has a treatment for all of them.
The incomparable Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle loves children good or bad and never scolds but has positive cures for Answer-Backers, Never-Want-to-Go-to-Bedders, and other boys and girls with strange habits.
The incomparable Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle loves children good or bad and never scolds but has positive cures for Answer-Backers, Never-Want-to-Go-to-Bedders, and other boys and girls with strange habits.
Summary from book #1 and
cover art from Goodreads.com
My review: The
concept of this series is fun and darling. The prose is long winded and repetitive. I was surprised my 6-year-old did not grow bored. These books were written in
the 1940s when, perhaps, attention spans were a little longer. The chapters are
quite long for a children’s book (30 minutes to read one chapter out loud) and
I really had to pace our bedtime routine to be able to have time for a chapter
at night. The book has no overarching
plot. Each chapter takes on the bad habits of one child and his/her frustrated
mother who tries to get advice from various friends and neighbors and lastly
resorts to calling Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for her unique and always perfect advice.
The first book, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle,
relied entirely on cunning, natural consequences, and giving kids a “taste of
their own medicine.” Subsequent books involved magical cures, which I didn’t
find half as endearing or fun.
While I didn’t love these books, my daughter sure did. They
are a favorite for her. She even learned a lesson or two, and asked for help
cleaning her room and caught herself tattle-telling. So that alone raises my
rating from three stars to four.
Old-fashioned gender roles and disciplinarian attitudes
abound. That could turn some readers off (I did skip the line where a parent
was noticing his daughters amazing qualities, summarizing that she would “make
someone a good wife someday” ) but most of the time it’s a relic of yesteryear,
sort of like watching a black-and-white show on Nick at Night and admiring the
wholesome goodness of the era while simultaneously rejoicing that things are
quite different today.
My rating: 4 stars
For the sensitive
reader: No worries, this book is squeaky clean. Though there are several gender
stereotypes that might bother some readers.
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