Title: “Heckedy Peg”
Author: Audrey Wood
Genre: Folk Tales/ Myths
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Copyright Date: 1992
Pages in Book: 32 pages
Reading Level: K-3
Summary: Heckedy Peg is a story about a witch and seven young children. One morning, the children’s mother decides to go into down to pick up some treats for the children. But before she leaves, she tells the children not to answer the door or let anyone in. The mother leaves, and the children start having fun around the house. No sooner appears Heckedy Peg, hobbling towards their house. She convinces the children to let her in, and in return she’ll give them a bag of gold. Not listening to their mothers warning, they let her in, and she quickly changes them into food, and kidnaps them, taking them back to her home. The children’s mother soon returns to find her children gone. She finds her way to Heckedy Peg’s house. Before she is allowed in, she must remove her shoes, and cut off her feet. Deciding to outsmart the witch, she kneels down and enters into the house. Heckedy Peg and the mother make a deal, that if she (the mother) can figure out which food is what child, she may have them back.
Reaction: I loved this book! I thought it was incredibly well written and the illustrations were amazing! There was so much detail and it almost looked as if the children were real! The message to children was clear, to listen to your parents, for bad things can happen if they don’t.
Recommendation: Personally, I wouldn’t read this book to my young children. I remember being terrified of the witch, as well as the fact that the mother “cut off her legs” to enter into the witches house. It’s a book that I feel, is more for the older children.
Potential Problems/Conflicts: The only main problem that I had with this book was that even though the pictures were amazing, I thought that they were rather dark. The witch absolutely terrified me, and I remember (as a child) being scared to death of older women for a while, because I thought that they were out to kidnap me and turn me into food.
I heard someone say something that sounded similar to "Heckedy Peg" on TV this evening, and I remembered this book. I was trying to tell my husband about it, and I kept getting goosebumps. This book TERRIFIED me as a child, and seeing that it had the same effect on someone else makes me feel a little less silly for that. Thanks for sharing!
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