Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay.
Country music tattletale free#
It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway-the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty. Gentle, supportive humor is reinforced by the comical illustrations. All the boys, even the bullies, make restitution for their wrongs, and good parenting wins the day. The boys’ tough, cool-and disappointed-dad explains that sometimes you just need to ask the adults for help, even if it makes you feel like a tattletale. When Louie collaborates, albeit grudgingly, with Ralphie’s attempt to “fight fire with fire,” the two of them end up hurting someone they really like. But every attempt Ralphie makes to stand up for himself results in Ralphie getting in trouble. “I don’t need anyone else fighting my battles,” he insists, determined not to become a tattletale. Ralphie won’t let anyone, even older brother Louie, help him confront the bullies, and he certainly doesn’t want the adults to know. They flip his lunch tray, pelt him with balls, and target him with peashooters. But when Kurt and Sid get in trouble, it’s Ralphie who becomes their next target. When a pair of bullies from the fifth grade start picking on mouse third grader Tiny, his classmate Ralphie the rat tells them to stop. A new life lesson for Ralphie and Louie Ratso, with an assist from their savvy single dad.
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