Rating: 
Summary: Fun for both children AND parents alike
Review: What a fun and funny book Margie Palatini has written--and Richard Egielski's cartoonish yet deadpan illustrations complement it beautifully. Palatini has taken the "Dum de dum dum" theme from TV's long-ago "Dragnet" and applied it here to a barnyard mystery. Sounds simple, and simplistic, but she soars in weaving into the story all sorts of fairy tale and nursery rhyme goodies--not to mention wonderful wordplay, like:"A lot of squawking going on down in the coop area, Ducktective Web. Looks like fowl play. Report says feathers are flying. Chief says we should check out the chicks." "Chicks?" "Check." "Let's fly." DUM DE DUM DUM . . . Palatini works in Peter Piper and his pack of pickled peppers (upping the ante by calling them perfect and purple as well), a falsely accused Little Boy Blue who offers the alibi that HE didn't do it because he was under the haystack, fast asleep--which the witnesses then confirm with: "The sheep were in the meadow. Cows in the corn." Swing back again quickly to the "Dragnet" end of things and the author makes one of the suspects an actual Dirty Rat (aptly named Ratzo). This is fun for children and possibly even more fun for their baby boomer parents. It's a great read.
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