by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 13, 2010

The illustrations are gorgeous. There's beautiful snow-covered mountains at the back of a deep, deep valley, and a little girl named Lucie looks down on a breathtaking view. She's far from her village of Little-town, and soon there's hints of a mysterious creature. Lucie sees a tin can collecting water from a spring, and tiny footprints that end by an enormous rock - with a doorway in its side!  And on the other side, someone sings a mysterious song.

"Lily-white and clean, oh!
With little frills between, oh!
Smooth and hot - red rusty spot
Never here be seen, oh!"

Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle" starts with a unique situation - the animals in the story won't talk! (And they also aren't running around dressed up in human clothes.) A little girl named Lucie has lost her pocket handkerchief, but none of the animals in the farm-yard will tell her if they've seen it!  Not the tabby kitten, the speckled hen, or Cock Robin.

They all make animal noises, and Lucie has to continue her search. But this creates even more interest in that strange creature behind the door...

Beatrix Potter always includes moments of surprising realism in her stories, which help to make the stories come alive. Behind the door in the rock is a tidy kitchen, and a smiling hedgehog named Mrs. Tiggy-Winky who's wearing a frumpy apron.  (And yes, she talks...) But the hedgehog is also just about the same size as the little girl. As strange as it seems, this lends an odd plausibility to their conversation!

Even though the animals didn't talk to Lucie, they apparently bring all their laundry to the hedgehog (Mrs. Tiggy-Winky identifies all the items of clothing that she's washing - for Cock Robin, Jenny Wren, Sally Henny-Penny, and Mrs. Rabbit.) My favorite illustration shows the stockings belong to the hen - which are, of course, very long and very yellow. And eventually Lucie discovers that the pocket handkerchief's that she's lost have also been picked up by Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.

But she's discovered something else important. The animals are wearing clothes after all - and people just mistake the clothes for a part of the animal. There's the kitten's white mittens, and a scarlet waist-coat belonging to Cock Robin. And there's even clothes for characters from some of Potter's other stories, including Peter Rabbit's (shrunken) blue jacket and a red tail-coat with no tail for Squirrel Nutkin!

By the end of the book, she's even paying a visit on Peter (and his cousin, Benjamin Bunny). And that's my favorite thing about this book. It implies that all of Beatrix Potter's characters all live together in the same enchanted village.

And that they all have the same laundry woman!

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