The Accidental Pastor's Wife

Here's a lesser known author/illustrator, Paul Galdone. I had some of his books when I was a kid and I still have one I read to my children called, "The Talking Turnip," written by Anne Rose and illustrated by Galdone. It is about an old woman who lived out in the woods back "when strange things still happened". She was about to throw her turnip into her soup kettle when it called out, "Don't put me in there!" She was so startled she dropped the spoon she was holding, which also spoke to her, then the floor spoke, and so on until she runs out of the house to tell the king her troubles, meeting a woodsman and a young boy along the way.

The pictures are what make the books, as many of his stories are retellings of folk tales. Born in Budapest in 1914, he made his living in the art department in a major publishing house in New York, where he emigrated in 1928. He was trained as an artist and his characters fairly speak off the page. Be sure to check out such favorites as: "The Little Red Hen", "Three Little Pigs", "The Gingerbread Boy", and "Three Billy Goats Gruff".

As Gladys Hunt says of him in her book, "Honey for a Child's Heart", "Children have been enjoying Galdone's renditions for generations."