This Is the House That Jack Built

This Is the House That Jack Built (Hardcover with Jacket) by Simms Taback

never used. 32 pages. Ages 4-8. Trade at Wanchai MTR station.

Also selling other children books, Please search classified for 69716761 if interested..

Simms Taback won the 2000 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, and was a runner-up in 1998 for There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. I'm also selling those two books for $150.

What happened in the house that Jack built? It all started with the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built. And then came the rat that ate the cheese and the cat who killed the rat. Caldecott Medal winning author and illustrator Simms Taback brings his distinctive humor and creativity to the beloved story of Jack and the house that he built.

Review:

From the very start—as endpapers reveal a variety of pencil-drawn houses with yellowing real estate ads as captions—the artist fills these busy pages with abundant details and diversions. The first spread introduces Jack's home on the left, with the text on the right, and the word "house" in eye-popping collage type. Ancillary images and asides accompany the vividly hued mixed-media illustrations and hand-lettered text that introduce the invading characters. On the spread announcing the cheese, for example, Taback reveals nine varieties (one of which "lay in the house that Jack built") and ranks them according to their pungency ("Not so smelly"; "Really stinky"). Superimposed on the image of "the cow with the crumpled horn" are labels indicating its parts (tail, hoof, udder) as well as the anatomical sources of some kid-pleasing delicacies (meatballs, Big Mac, etc.). As previous characters move to the right of each spread, they (and the growing text) begin to crowd out the house itself. Taback slips himself into the tale at its end (wearing a beret bearing the words "Guess who?"), applying the finishing touches to a picture that gathers the entire cast of characters. A zany and fun take on this 18th-century classic.