They, unfortunately, will more likely focus on the book's nightmarish elements: insects crawling in the witch's bed, an owl with a dead mouse in his beak and the frightening visage of Daisy O'Grady herself. The sophomoric humor (a jar is labeled ``Porksnot & Co.-Mucus Pickle''), of the sort that delights readers of Mad magazine, will go right over the heads of the intended audience. In a book aimed at very young children, Goodman's surreal visions, at times reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch, far too often overstep the bounds of good taste-and even stray into the Freudian, as in one instance where a dead fish dangles from a pair of panties hanging on a clothesline. Her bare-bones storyline, in which she poses and answers a series of questions about a witch named Daisy O'Grady, isn't the problem-although it is surprisingly pedestrian-rather, the blunder is with the choice of illustrator. Just as actors are occasionally miscast, so too can authors and illustrators be mismatched by the powers that be in publishing: Fox's latest picture book is a classic example.
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