Erin Dealey

Happy dancing over here because Betsy Bird is back to celebrate the

Book Birthday of her latest PB,

POP! GOES THE NURSERY RHYME

Illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi (Union Square)

About the Book

In this fun read-aloud spin on some timelessly treasured nursery rhymes, a Secretary Bird’s storytime is continually interrupted by a certain, pesky weasel.

(You know the one…) –ED

“A raucous celebration of rule- breaking that will have young readers eagerly anticipating each rhyme’s incoming “POP!” — Starred Review PW

Let’s ask some Questions

Q 1. I see that this clever book arose out of your urge to inject a surprise into the classic nursery rhymes. (You know I love these page-turn surprises. PETER EASTER FROG loves them too—haha. And the Secretary BIRD? So good.) Where were we–? Ah, when did these POP! interjections first occur– when you were a child? Reading to your own little ones? A particular Story Time at the library where you were/are working?

Betsy Bird: Thank you for the kind words about the Secretary Bird! Isn’t it a marvel? But to get to your question, these interjections were the necessary reaction of a nursery rhyme-addled brain. When I first had kids I was determined to be a good mother.

What does a good mother do? She inculcates the children in works of literature that they will be able to draw upon their whole lives. And where do you start? With nursery rhymes!

So I grabbed all the big compendiums by guys like Arnold Lobel and Tomie dePaola. But part of what makes nursery rhymes so great is also what makes them so tedious. They’re just the same rhymes over… and over… and over… and over… Is it any wonder I started to get a little punch drunk?

ED Note: Pretty sure a few grown-ups (me, for instance) relate to those rhymes-on-repeat…

Betsy Bird: Before I knew what I was doing I started interjecting the weasel from Pop! Goes the Weasel into other rhymes. And what I learned was that doing this was comedy gold (at least for ankle biters). It really seemed a natural next step to turn that instinct into a book.

Process

Q 2. Can you share a bit about the process of writing this book? How many revisions? Any surprises or challenges—besides that persistent weasel?

Betsy Bird: Sure thing! I’ve had books where the revision process was fairly painful. This was not one of those cases. A lot of the credit can be given to my editor Maria Russo who stayed with the book from start to finish.

Early versions of the book focused mostly on the Secretary Bird’s own language. It’s the grown-up substitute in the book. The straight man. The guy in Monty Python insisting that everything is becoming too silly. But getting the tone of voice was key, and it took quite a number of edits to get it just right.

Surprises

Betsy Bird: Surprises and challenges mostly involved making the text work with Andrea’s art. Andrea came in and created great pieces for the book right from the get-go, but sometimes I’d realize that I had to change something so that it fit perfectly with the accompanying illustrations.

Q 3. Did any other nursery rhymes end up on the cutting room floor? Have you perhaps tucked them away for a companion book?

Betsy Bird: Well… yes. There were some we couldn’t use because they had racist beginnings or were looped into minstrel shows back in the day. We certainly didn’t want to include any of those! Then, once those were done away with, that left just loads of others.

It’s funny, but not every nursery rhyme lends itself to the “POP!” format. They have to be relatively well-known and relatively short so that the weasel doesn’t have that long to wait to appear. As for a companion book, there actually is one in the works. I can’t say much about it, but I can say that it won’t involve nursery rhymes as much…

Q 4. How did you land on the character of the Secretary Bird? 

Betsy Bird: So for that, I have to credit my illustrator Andrea Tsurumi entirely. Initially the narrator didn’t appear on the page. It was going to be this bodiless voice ala The Book With No Pictures that stood in as a parental scold.

Then I thought about there being a kind of a Mother Goose character. But since I didn’t specify it was a goose, that left enough leeway for Andrea to work in their own incredible take. Andrea proceeded to show me videos not simply of weasels (to show me how adorable they truly are) but also secretary birds.

I was utterly unfamiliar with them, but they’re amazing! Shockingly beautiful with these ridiculously long legs that they use to kick snakes to death. Have you ever heard of anything so badass? I was instantly sold and the Secretary Bird was in.

Illustration Qs

Q 5. The lively illustrations match the tone of the story perfectly. What surprises (There’s that word again!) did Andrea Tsurumi bring to the project?

Betsy Bird: Oh, constant amazing surprises! Trust me, for a project like this, you want an Andrea. For one thing, they did stuff with nursery rhyme images I really and truly had never seen before.

Have YOU ever seen Mary from Mary Had a Little Lamb portrayed as a ewe? It’s a sheep with a lamb! My favorite, though is Little Miss Muffet. She is, to put it simply, buff. When I asked Andrea about it, they pointed out that whey is something body builders tend to eat. But who else would think of such a thing? Brilliance!

Q 6. What is your favorite spread or line of text?

Betsy Bird: One of the reasons I wanted Andrea for this project was because they bring a level of chaotic brilliance that few other artists can match. As they recently told me, “We have the forces of mayhem at our beck and call – let’s unleash them.” I highly suggest that you check out their previous picture book Accident for a fantastic example of this.

Anyway, for this reason, I have a hard time choosing a favorite spread, but if I had to, I’d say it would be the moment the very book itself explodes and you have all the characters leaping out of the pages in a wild frenzy. No one, and I mean no one, does this better than Andrea.

Q 7. How is this book different from other books where characters interrupt the narrative?

Betsy Bird: Well, in those cases the character doing the interrupting is a stand-in for the child reader. The difference here is that the weasel is more akin to classic trickster characters. I was in a meeting with Andrea and Maria today and we decided the weasel is like a combination of both the Roadrunner AND Bugs Bunny. In other books, the focus is on the interrupting, but here I’d like to think that at least part of the focus is on the nursery rhymes themselves.

What’s Next?

Q 8. Are there more projects in the queue that you can share?

Betsy Bird: I do! It was finally announced recently. I’ve a picture book slated for 2027 with Matthew Cordell called Terrible Terrible Birds. It’s my very first nonfiction-adjacent book for kids. It follows the peregrine falcons that perch on my library every year, where they hatch their eggs. Our current pair is, and I mean this with love, dumb as a box of rocks. They’re nothing like the previous pair of pros. So, naturally, that’s where the story is. It shows that even animals have to learn things like how to parent.

Take Aways…

Q 9. What do you hope readers will take away from reading POP! GOES THE NURSERY RHYME?

Betsy Bird: Well, really I just hope they have a good time with it! The readaloud potential is high. Even better, there’s an app called Novel Effect that you can use with the book. Essentially, when you read it aloud, the app will make background music and sound affects to match. Cool, right? But even without those bells and whistles, it’s just a fun book for both parent and child.

Endless thanks to Betsy Bird for joining us on the blog today, and Happy Book Birthday to

POP! GOES THE NURSERY RHYME.

To learn more about Betsy, her podcast, blogs, and books, follow her on social media:

TwitterX – @FuseEight

Instagram – @fusenumber8

Threads – @fusenumber8

BlueSky – @fuse8.bsky.social

PS Betsy’s previous visit to the blog is here.

Next on the blog, an early Book Birthday celebration of

Brynne Barnes & Bryan Collier’s new pb from Chronicle: