Humpty Dumpty Lived Near a Wall

Starred review from November 1, 2019
In this illustrated retelling of the "Humpty Dumpty" nursery rhyme, the egg still falls, but does Humpty lose it all? Humpty Dumpty lives near a wall and has "no fun at all," nor do any of the creatures who inhabit this sharp, dark world brought to exquisite life by masterful black-and-white illustrations. The king in this gloomy world has forbidden his subjects--all well-known fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters, a clever, nuanced touch--to dream. But Humpty has a dream anyway: He wants to look over the wall. He builds a ladder in secret ("he couldn't even tell his friend the Mad Hatter"), and one night, he props his ladder against the wall and climbs. The next day, an egg is found in pieces and the king declares the wall has won, sending out photos of the smashed egg. But in his haste to dampen any glimmers of hope his subjects might harbor, the king has neglected to look carefully at the eggshell, and what he misses sets his subjects free. Hughes' rhyming text is simple, as befits its source, but its timely message is profound: Dreams cannot be stopped by a wall. Christopher's sublimely detailed illustrations, the style of which, appropriately, harkens to Arthur Rackham, strengthen and expand the story indelibly, giving it visual excitement and atmospheric impact. Wickedly, subversively brilliant. (Picture book. 6-10)

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February 3, 2020
Dizzyingly detailed black-and-white illustrations draw readers into a dystopian take on an eggy tale. Hughes’s Humpty lives in a walled kingdom ruled by a profit-mad king: “All the king’s subjects/ lived life in dismay/ All day long busy,/ with no time to play.” Christopher’s simple rhyming text is dense with possibility—of walls as a symbol, of “self-serving” kings—but the plot is allusive and murky. Though Humpty scales the edifice and crashes, and the king rushes out photos trumpeting the wall’s victory, “On broken eggshells, pushed in a great pile.../ one piece was on top,// that piece had a smile.” Christopher’s inky drawings render fairy-land grotesques with needle-sharp lines and indicate that Humpty’s defiant act sparks ladder-building in a variety of places. Ages 10–up.

February 28, 2020

Gr 5 Up-We all know about his fall. But why was Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall? And how did he get up there? To answer these questions, Hughes creates an eerie political tale told in poetic lines. The humanized egg figure lived near a wall and "had no fun at all." In densely packed black-and-white drawings, Christopher provides dark, sometimes macabre, views of the crowd of familiar legendary figures and imaginative beings, some tiny and others gigantic, under the rule of the tyrannical king who "had forbidden his empire to dream," and kept everyone working. Tiny details line the street that's in the wall's shadow and the interior spaces where Humpty Dumpty works, lives, and makes plans for the future. Spiky, thorned vines twist around the formal frames of some pictures or text blocks. The busy bits fall away for a few pages as Humpty Dumpty climbs his ladder in the night to fulfill his ambition of looking over the wall. An enormous, mangy rooster greets the broken bits of ladder as morning breaks. While the king proclaims that the wall has won, the townsfolk find another sort of message in that pile of broken eggshells. The economical text and rich scenes are an evocative blend of humor and melancholy. VERDICT This is not a nursery rhyme and it will be confusing for most picture book readers. Offer this title to teachers who would like to incorporate visual literacy and discussion into reading classes.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2019
Grades 4-6 In this fractured fairy tale for older readers, Humpty Dumpty lives beside a great, capital-w Wall, beneath its shadow and that of an oppressive king, who has forbidden fun and dreaming. But when a chink in the Wall lets in a shaft of sunlight, Humpty can't help wondering what's on the other side. So he secretly builds a ladder that lets him perch atop, and then fall from, the Wall's towering top. But this king doesn't try to put Humpty together again; rather, he uses Humpty's shattered shell as a warning to his subjects, blind to the fragment bearing a contented smile. It's hard to say what the exact message of Hughes' story is, but a general understanding will be gleaned that achieving one's dreams is worth taking risks. Christopher's intricately detailed, black-pen illustrations, stylistically similar to Chris Riddell's, elevate this tale beyond simple twisted fable to visual feast. They capture the story's haunting mood and are peppered with beleaguered fairy-tale characters who find hope in the bravery of a singular egg.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)