The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon

The Dish and the Spoon are the main characters in this book which plays wild variations on the old nursery rhyme:

Hey, diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon,
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

The best word for this story is rollicking. It may seem impossible, but in some thirty pages, Dish and Spoon gain vaudeville fame during the Great Depression, deal with loan sharks, participate in a bank robbery, are punished for their crime, and thankfully, come back together for a happy ending. The lively illustrations, though heavy on earth tones, add to the story's rapid pace. This is the sort of book that may well appeal to the adult reader as well as to a 7 or 8 year old child, and the combination of plot and pictures is sure to spur conversation about these adventures.

Mina Grey, the book's award winning author, lives in England and has written such other stories as The Very Smart Pea and the Princess-to-Be and Traction Man is Here.

Pick up The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon at your local public library and share it with your favorite 2nd or 3rd grader.