Heckedy Peg

Author: Audrey Wood
Publisher: Voyager Books
Copyright: 1987
Genre: Fable/Fairy tale
Pages: 32
Reading Level: Ages 5 to 8 (Barnes and Noble)
Summary: In this story the mother of seven children (named after the days of the week) tells them that since they are such good children she will bring them each one thing that they want from town. Each child tells her what they want and before the mother leaves she tells the children to make sure they don't let strangers into the house and that they don't touch the fire. After she leaves, the children begin to play and before long a witch, Heckedy Peg, comes to the window and asks the children to let her in. They tell her that they can't because their mother told them not to let strangers in the house. She asks them to bring her a burning straw to light her pipe. Once again the children tell her that they can't because their mother told them not to touch the fire. After this, the witch bribes the children to let her in and light her pipe by bribing them, saying she will give them a bag of gold. The children do so and when her pipe is lit, the witch turns all of the children into different kinds of food and takes them to her hut. When the mother comes home and finds her children missing, a blackbird who had seen the whole thing, tells her what happened and leads the mother to the witches hut. The mother pleads to come in and let her have her children back. The witch tells the mother she can't come in because her shoes are dirty so the mother takes off her shoes. But then the witch says she can't come in because her socks are dirty so the mother takes off her socks. But the witch still says she can't come in because her feet are dirty. The mother says she will cut off her feet and goes out into the woods to pretend to cut off her feet. She comes back to the hut crawling on her knees with her feet tucked in her dress so the witch thinks she cut off her feet and lets her in. However, the witch says she can only have her children back if she can guess right the first time, on which child is what food. Cleverly, the mother guesses correctly by matching what each child asked for, with what they turned into. For example, Monday wanted butter and butter goes with bread so the bread was Monday. In the end, the mother chases the witch to the bridge and the witch jumps off the bridge and is never heard from again.
Who would you recommend this book to? I guess this book could be good for young children just as an entertaining fairy-tale that teaches them not to trust strangers and not to play with fire. It would be fine for any young child in the age range mentioned above.
Potential problems or conflicts: This book may scare some young children.
My reaction: To be honest, I did not like this book. I thought it was kind of creepy and I just feel like it's pretty dark and disturbing, especially for a children's book. I thought the illustrations were really well done but not worth the story.