What happens when the goose gets loose? She manages to throw the entire barnyard
into chaos, and young readers will be tickled by the goings-on. After breaking
out of her pen, the audacious creature eats the hens’ grain; scares the sheep
silly; causes the ram to butt a fussy-looking child, whose “dress got messed and
her hair un-styled”; sets free the horses, who storm the house; and provokes a
bull named Spence to charge through the pasture fence. Lindbergh’s rollicking
rhymed verse charts the goose’s destructive course, as Kellogg shows feathers
and flowerpots flying, trashcans tumbling and wild-eyed people and animals
scurrying in every direction. The goose calms down, finally, after the police
arrive to set things right, and before long an explanation for her antics
surfaces. The book closes with a soothing, exquisitely illustrated dream
sequence that offsets the frenzy of the rest of the tale, and demonstrates
Kellogg’s remarkable versatility.