The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything [Import] [ペーパーバック]

As a little old lady makes her way home through a dark and scary forest, she comes across a pair of old shoes that walk all by themselves. Assuring the shoes that she is not afraid of them, she next comes across a floating pair of pants. A shirt follows the pants, gloves and hat follow the shirt, and finally a huge scary pumpkin head follows them all. In the end the brave little old lady finds a use for the floating objects and everyone ends happily.

The book conjures up images of other pop culture touchstones where clothing floats all of its own accord. The well-known "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" for example. And like "Bedknobs", the clothes in this story are definitely malevolent. Stalking the nice old lady through the woods, each article has its own specific sounds. The boots go "CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP", the shirt goes, "SHAKE SHAKE", and the pants (for reasons best left to the author) go, "WIGGLE WIGGLE". As the number of objects increase, the number of sounds increase as well. A good oral reading of this story will give each sound a scary touch to drill the point home. The illustrations accompanying the story are rather nice. They are equally adept at displaying the old lady's grey skied country home as they are the dark bleak autumnal night where she meets the frightening accoutrements. It's a great story with a rousing plot. Anyone familiar with fall in the countryside (and anyone who just loves Halloween in general) will enjoy this great old-fashioned book.

Once upon a time, a little old lady who was not afraid of anything walked home through the moonlit woods. She rounded a bend on the path and found two big shoes that go CLOMP, CLOMP by themselves.

"Get out of my way, you two big shoes! I'm not afraid of you," she said. She kept on walking, and the shoes clomp-clomped behind her. Next she met up with a pair of pants, then a shirt, and pretty soon she had an entire outfit following her. Each time, she ordered, "Get out of my way... I'm not afraid of you" and walked on just a wee bit faster.

Then she got to the "very huge, very orange, very scary pumpkin head." Walking a little bit faster was out of the question -- running wasn't. She ran all the way home,

"[b]ut behind her she could hear Two shoes go CLOMP, CLOMP, One pair of pants go WIGGLE, WIGGLE, One shirt go SHAKE, SHAKE, Two gloves go CLAP, CLAP, One hat go NOD, NOD, And one scary pumpkin head go BOO, BOO!" When she bravely proclaimed that she was still not frightened, all the stuff that had followed her home didn't know what to do with itself. But she had an idea. She found a place for it in her garden, where it could scare all the birds away.

Part of the magic in this story lies in it's repetition. My kids love saying and acting out shake, shake, nod, nod, etc. (and I may be a very proud mom, but nobody says "wiggle, wiggle" cuter than my toddler). Another part of the magic is the illustrations. They're serious, but not scary. At one point, the little old lady pushes the shirt out of her way. In the next illustration, it's following her with it's sleeves crossed in the classic "humph!" pose so familiar to parents of strong-willed children.