If Raymond Chandler wrote books for children, you might mistake Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? for something penned by him. Instead, David Levinthal and John Nickel, have reinvented Philip Marlowe in the form of a tough talking frog named Officer Binky, who investigates long-running unsolved fairytales and hands out justice. Here’s a small sample:
There are eight million stories in the forest. This is one of them.
It was a typical Sunday morning for the bear family. They had gone out for a walk while their porridge was cooling.
I was working the robbery detail out of the Pinecone Division. My name’s Binky. I’m a cop.
The call came in at 12:15. It was Mrs. Bear, and she was upset. I knew I’d better get over there right away.
In this version of Goldilocks, the perp goes down with a nice, clean confession. Once again, Officer Binky gets his fairytale character. 
There’s a new investigator in fairytale land who doesn’t let even the seemingly, nice little girls get away with anything.
You will probably laugh more than your kids reading these reinventions. But they are a nice way to introduce some skepticism into how your children read stories. Why did Humpty Dumpty fall? Was he pushed?
This could lead to some fun reexaminations of old family favorites. Was the big bad wolf really so bad? Maybe Snow White wasn’t really so blameless? Parodies of classic children’s stories are all the rage these days, but this is one of the best.
