Fairy Tales & Folklore - Regional, Fiction - General & Miscellaneous

Teeny Weeny Bop

Name: Teeny Weeny Bop
Author: Margaret Read MacDonald
ISBN: 9780807579923

by Margaret Read MacDonald, Diane Greenseid

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Overview

Teeny Weeny Bop has found a gold coin. Her luck is made; she'll buy a pet pig! But while she sleeps, the pig destroys the garden! Teeny needs a better pet—she's going to trade her pig for a cat. The cat destroys the living room!

Synopsis

Children's Literature

Margaret Read McDonald is a gifted librarian storyteller who once again has turned an oral tale into appealing, playful reading fun. Here she riffs on variations of two old favorites, the Mother Goose rhyme of "To market, to market to buy a fat pig" and a "trading down" folktale, that is, a story in which the foolish hero successively trades an object for something less valuable (tale type J2081.1 for folklorists). In this case, Teeny Weeny Bop begins by trading off a gold coin for a pig, then decides she would be better off with a cat, then a hamster, then a slug. Children are likely to join in the rhyming refrain with glee and anticipate how each pet plays havoc with Teeny's house and possessions as she sleeps, leading her to return to Mr. Pet Man. You would think that Teeny Weeny would be a bit wiser after the slug slimes everything, but the folk wisdom that "some people never learn" holds true. Diane Greenseid's brightly colored caricature drawings are as extravagantly foolish as the story. Kindergarten and primary classrooms could have a wonderful time making up their own variants of this tale. There could be wonderful discussions about what constitutes a "trading down."

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Editorials

Children's Literature - Mary Hynes-Berry

School Library Journal

K-Gr 2-The bright, energetic pictures match the silliness of this tale that combines several folkloric motifs. Readers will recognize the story of a foolish person who runs off to buy a pet after finding money and then repeatedly makes bad bargains (trading a gold coin for a pig, a pig for a cat, etc.) until she eventually ends up with nothing. Children familiar with nursery rhymes will catch on to the refrain based on "To market, to market!" The repetition of similar lines lends the tale to telling aloud, and youngsters will happily join in the fun when the narrator interrupts to ask them what they think will happen next. Teeny Weeny Bop never learns her lesson, and when she finds another coin, she is ready to enter the mad cycle again. The action only ends because the narrator intrudes and tells her that her silly story has to stop. Children will enjoy the colorful pictures and rhythmic text.-Martha Simpson, Stratford Library Association, CT Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In this aptly illustrated version of a tale that folklorist/storyteller extraordinaire MacDonald has told for years, and even recorded, the title character is cast as a small woman with half-glasses, a tendency toward wide, exuberant gestures and-except for huge woolly red hair, a certain resemblance to the author. Having come upon a gold coin, Teeny Weeny Bop dances off, "To market, to market! To buy a fat PIG!" for a pet. When the pig ruins her garden, she trades it for a cat, which proceeds to wreck her living room, and so on down, until even a slug proves troublesome, and she ends up with neither coin nor companion. But then she finds a silver coin. . . . Crafted from folkloric elements and presented in a mix of bumptious prose and verse, this original story lends itself equally well to reading or telling; either way, young audiences will clamor for more despite the closing, "No more, no more Teeny Weeny Bop! / Your silly story has got to . . . STOP!" (source note) (Picture book. 5-9)