Hickory Dickory Dash
Hickory Dickory moan!
Trapped in the danger zone
A trembling mouse
In an old doll’s house
The cat close by
One huge green eye!
Hickory dickory moan!
Hickory Dickory dock
You might be in for a shock!
Did you ever wonder why the mouse climbed the clock? Maybe she was looking for her two lost mouse kids! Maybe she was worried about a cat?
This is the second backstory to nursery rhyme picture book from Laura Wood and me.
Hickory Dickory Dash was read by more than a million kids across Australia and New Zealand as the ALIA National Simultaneos Storytime title in 2018.
It’s has three sister titles, The Cow Tripped Over the Moon, Baa Baa Blue Sheep, and Humpty Dumpty Sat on the Slide.
Some inspirations for Hickory
Hickory Dickory Dash is the follow up title to The Cow Tripped Over the Moon. Like its predecessor, it was selected by ALIA as the National Simultaneous Storytime book, which means that across Australia and New Zealand, on 23rd May 2018 at 11am AEST, 1.086 million kids read the book together.
Like Cow, it’s a backstory to a nursery rhyme. This time, it’s Hickory Dickory Dock, and I chose to adopt this one because it had a handy time deadline built in! The 1am BONG of the clock seemed to be a natural climax.
From there, it was influenced by The Book With No Pictures which I was reading a lot to my kids at the time I wrote Hickory. I loved the loud silly noises in that title. The onomatopoeia for each Hickory dickory line came from that. I also like the room-by-room experience of the 80s Australian picture book, Possum in the House (and Peepo for that matter), and the separation anxiety of Owl Babies and Are You My Mother. And I can’t forget my own book The Cow Tripped Over the Moon. I loved the time stamps in that one , and that is continued with Hickory Dickory Dash.
Laura Wood’s illustrations are incredible. She is so talented when it comes to shadow and nighttime. My great contribution to the illustrations is to send her a picture of my dishwasher!
She used it as the basis for this illustration. Laura’s drawn kitchen is neater than mine, although unfortunately, right at the time of posting this, my real kitchen has at least as many mice! Hmmmm. There’s a stark contrast in the love I have for story book mice (Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh is among my all time faves), versus real life mice. I’m quite the hypocrite!
A million kids reading Hickory!
In 2018, Hickory Dickory Dash was the National Simultaneous Storytime title, just as The Cow Tripped Over the Moon was the year before. This was incredibly exciting, and for the first time New Zealand was added to the event. I was on site at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, reading the story with mouse ears on! Lots of fun. 1.86 million people registered for NSS on the day. I’ll post some videos and pictures from the day below.
Geelong PS.
Guardian Angels, Wynn
Wiley Park PS
Serpentine PS.
Story Box Library
To celebrate the Kiwis becoming part of NSS, New Zealander and Play School icon Jay Laga’aia read the book for Story Box Library.
Here’s the preview.