Book Descriptions
for Previously by Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
A girl named Goldilocks has just arrived home, all “bothered and hot” from a mad rush through the woods. “Previously she had been sleeping in somebody else’s bed, eating somebody else’s porridge, and breaking somebody else’s chair! . . . Previously she had bumped into a hurling and older boy named . . . Jack.” It turns out Jack is running like mad as well, away from the beanstalk he’d just descended. Previously, he’d done an unlikely trade: his cow for magic beans. Before that, he’d been playing soccer. And before that, “he had come tumbling down the high hill with his argumentative little sister . . . Jill.” Allan Ahlberg trips blithely backwards through the things that came before in the interconnected lives of four other familiar fairy tale characters in a distinctive picture book offering terrific fun for readers and listeners, and creative writing inspiration for the classroom. Where does it all end? At the origins of it all, of course: “once upon a time.” (Ages 4–9)
CCBC Choices 2008. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2008. Used with permission.
From The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY)
The adventures of nursery characters, including Goldilocks, the Frog Prince, and Cinderella, are told in reverse sequence and with all the stories linked together. Once you get into the rhythm of the sequence of events, you begin to anticipate what will happen next—that is, what happened pre viously. Ingman’s illustrations detail the reverse sequence of each tale and provide visual links to the next one. The ending is particularly inventive as the characters are shown as the tiny babies that they were “once upon a time
Originally published by Walker Books Great Britain, in 2007.
Bridges to Understanding: Envisioning the World through Children's Books. © USBBY, 2011. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
The team behind THE RUNAWAY DINNER reverses direction in this clever pastiche of fairy tales in which everyone lives happily ever . . . before.
"Jack was running like mad in the dark woods with a hen under his arm.
Previously, he had stolen the hen and climbed down a beanstalk."
But do you know what was Jack doing before he climbed down the beanstalk?
Or what Jack and Jill were arguing about before they went up the hill? And what happened before that? Every story, every person, and every thing started somewhere, and now the inventive and whimsical Allan Ahlberg explores what all your favorite storybook characters were up to previously, aided by Bruce Ingman’s energetic illustrations.
From the Hardcover edition.
"Jack was running like mad in the dark woods with a hen under his arm.
Previously, he had stolen the hen and climbed down a beanstalk."
But do you know what was Jack doing before he climbed down the beanstalk?
Or what Jack and Jill were arguing about before they went up the hill? And what happened before that? Every story, every person, and every thing started somewhere, and now the inventive and whimsical Allan Ahlberg explores what all your favorite storybook characters were up to previously, aided by Bruce Ingman’s energetic illustrations.
From the Hardcover edition.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.
