Review first published on my site, Dragon Bite Books.

Mother Goose to the Rescue!—as it should, given the text from which it takes inspiration—rhymes as well—and does so I think more effortlessly than Fire Chief Fran, another book about firefighters that we read that day. The cast of Mother Goose to the Rescue! are mostly human, the characters familiar from Mother Goose nursery rhymes: Little Boy Blue; Jack and Jill; Jack Be Nimble; Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary; Little Miss Muffett; Mary, who had a little lamb; Old King Cole; and the King and Queen of Hearts. These human characters are depicted having a range of skin tones. Mother Goose; the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Mary’s lamb; Goosey Gander, and the five piggies (who went to market, etc) round out the cast. The book opens with a page spread of the characters and my story time audience and I tried to identify the characters from their portraits before jumping into the story. We enjoyed discovering whether or not our guesses were correct. We enjoyed finding the characters in the illustrations and the attention to detail in the illustrations by Jessica Gibson. I especially enjoyed the tiny fire truck that Itsy-Bitsy uses. In this, the firefighters race to the castle bakery to put out a fire. Resourceful firefighters, having used up the available water, turn to jam as a solution to the sticky situation. And of course, the firefighters are ultimately successful in putting out the fire and saving the castle from serious harm and are thanked by the king and queen. In the end, they race off to another emergency.