Starred Review ALA Booklist

Starred Review Hard-boiled detective Joe Dumpty's ovoid body is encased in a '40s-era belted brown trench coat topped with a fedora, and his clipped statements will remind older readers of TV's Joe Friday. Here, cleft-chinned Joe recounts how he cracked one of the toughest mysteries in Mother Gooseland: the assault with intent to spill the yolky interior of his older brother, Humpty. Joe tells how he examined the crime scene before the ambulance arrived (pulled by all the king's horses and filled with all the king's men). He recovers some evidence from under Miss Muffet's tuffet, interviews the shell-shocked Humpty in the hospital, and follows the trail of evidence to one very huffy Big Bad Wolf, dressed to kill in gangster pinstripes. This enchanting send-up of old-time detective stories will have older readers in stitches, while younger readers will get caught up in the clever recombination of fairy-tale characters. The illustrations, done in watercolor and pen and ink, are as filled with puns and crowded with humorous detail as the story en the typeface looks like it was pounded out by an old Remington typewriter. This CSI: Mother Goose is a winner.

Horn Book

After Humpty falls off his famous perch, his trench coat-wearing detective brother, Joe Dumpty, sets out to prove that he was pushed. Miss Muffet (a.k.a. Muffy), Chicken Little, and the Big Bad Wolf are all suspects. The story, including loads of puns (Humpty: "I'm shell-shocked") and comic strip-style panels with dialogue balloon commentary, goes down over-easy.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Clever wordplay marks Ransom's (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">What Do Your Parents Do? [When You're Not Home]) fast-paced, noir-styled offering. Detective Joe Dumpty unravels the real reason his brother, Humpty, took a spill, interviewing characters that hail from the pages of Mother Goose (she puts in an appearance, too). The puns, a little more subtle than in similar stories, are on target for the suggested audience, e.g., “I looked at my brother. He wasn't moving. Whoever did this was gonna fry!” Axelsen (the Piccolo and Annabelle series) provides plenty of humor with busy cartoon illustrations, many of them inset with boxed vignettes; Chicken Little and her offspring, for example, wear crash helmets and reside in a fortified bunker. The noir conventions add a layer of sophistication to the nursery-rhyme setting, ratcheting up the book's appeal for primary-grade readers. Ages 6–9. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Feb.)

Kirkus Reviews

Humpty Dumpty's hard-boiled brother tackles the mystery of his infamous fall. In a big gold trench coat and matching fedora, private eye Joe Dumpty makes a bold assertion—"Humpty Dumpty was pushed"—and sets out to crack the case, supported by police Chief (Mother) Goose. His droll investigation covers a rogue's gallery of nursery-rhyme characters. Miss Muffet proves a tough cookie; Joe finds a key piece of evidence under her tuffet. Other suspects include Goldilocks (who's house-sitting for the Three Bears and answers the door in pajamas and bedhead), a Zoot-suited Wolf, a skittish Chicken Little and the bickering Three Little Pigs. Ransom's execution of her delicious premise is scattershot, but with many more hits than misses, and her text is substantial, appropriate for her target school-age audience. Axelsen's watercolor-cum-pen-and-ink illustrations offer additional laughs and surprises. While done with a bit more polish and 'tude by Margie Palatini and Richard Egieski in 2001's The Web Files , this nursery-rhyme caper will please. (Picture book. 6-9)

School Library Journal (Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 CST 2023)

Gr 1-4 When Humpty falls off the wall, his brother Joe, a detective in Mother Gooseland, is convinced that he was pushed. Thus begins the unraveling of the mystery of who did the dastardly deed. All of the characters use cell phones and some drive cars in this long and complicated tale. There are a lot of egg jokes, and wordplay abounds. In the end, Little Miss Muffet and the Big Bad Wolf go off to jail for their crime. Now Joe Dumpty has more work to do as the Dish just ran away with the Spoon and Bo Peep's sheep are roaming. The illustrations are done in watercolor, with pen and ink. The drawings are various sizes and often there are multiple frames per page. Pictures are detailed, and many contain speech balloons. This is a text-heavy story that will tickle the funny bone of readers old enough to get the jokes. Ieva Bates, Ann Arbor District Library, MI