An interesting take on the trope of a questionable old woman outside of town who set unruly children straight. I thought it was okay. The illustrations were cute but the story felt a bit clunky.

I really like the watercolor illustrations in this book. The story is a little older for my 3 year old but cute all the same. The overall premise is kinda creepy but I really liked the yak. The story and lesson to be learned is great though

I love the watercolours illustrations there beautifully. My favourite is the cow in the field. Ms Goshsquash story shows children that they have consequences about the things they do and to other people . This story tells the story of three children who are bad and because of this Ms Goshsquash needs to show them them some home truths so they can change there behaviour. This is good story for you children to learn about there actions.
Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book.

Ms. Goshsquash is a rhyming, lyrical book that tells the story of three children who are used to being naughty and getting their way. One day, whilst they are skipping school, the local witch Ms. Goshsquash decides to teach them a lesson to make them see the error of their ways.

The message of this story is easy to understand and will offer a great lesson that children don’t always realize - their actions have consequences and can hurt people they care about, I think this will be a great addition to any library.

The watercolor illustrations in this book are beautiful, with a full and soft color palette. I loved the yak and wish we saw more of Ms. Goshsquash’s farm.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for an eARC.

Very good watercolours illustrate this full-colour rhymed story, but it features a lot that doesn't really hang together. From the very first line, that tells us the name of the fantasy town – a name of zero consequence to anything – to the fact the title character has a yak – again, useful for putting fun into the artwork but for nothing else – we're deluged with extraneous stuff. The story could just have been allowed to run its natural course without these wacky details, for it's simplicity itself, albeit packed with the unanswered. Ms Goshsquash has a way with magic portals, and a magic mirror, that can show a naughty kid the error of their ways, and so she uses them on three children here, but we don't know if they're deserving of being snatched away to fantasy-land and given such a lesson. Nor why the cow is there.

The rhymes are quite well sustained, but the meter and length of the line does vary a little too much to call this a classic. If I remember this for anything it is for the artwork, however, with watercolour a slightly unusual choice for getting character and faces portrayed as well as they are shown here. There is an outside chance a guardian or parent could use this book multiple times to instil the idea of the kindly-yet-witchy Ms Goshsquash as a potential consequence for our bad behaviour, but making sure this gets re-read might be a struggle too much. I don't wish it ill, but I did wish for it to have had more concision. Three and a half stars.

Review

It is the first experience that I have with Netgalley, and I hope I can have many more. I like reading children’s books because they are beautiful and I love seeing the illustrations. Also, I’m an English teacher here in Brazil and I think that using children's books in the classroom with my students help them not only to learn the English language, but also to understand its use and all its possibilities, and to develop emotionally to express themselves in a second language.

I’m going to start talking about the plot. I think that narrating experiences and reading them help enact the feeling and the experience on ourselves, especially for children reading about other children. They may not act like Tilda, Roscoe and Billy, but they can see through their eyes and understand that behaving in a way that hurt and bully others is not nice at all. I am also a fan of everything that includes magic and witches, especially good ones that are the main character or help the others. I would like to have Ms. Goshsquash powers of controlling time and space - because that how she seems to know about the children and to have them in the classroom at the right time. I think that maybe adding two or three pages showing the kids doing good deeds would give even more emphasis to the lesson taught by the book, but besides this, I have to say that I enjoyed it very much and I would use it with my students.

About using it to teach English, it would be very useful because of the rhythm it is written in and all the possibilities to work out the phonic skills of my students. As English is not our first language, rhyming and rhythm in stories are very helpful.

To conclude my review, I would like to compliment the illustrations. I myself love watercolor images and the illustrations in the book complemented the magic of the story pretty well. I have to say that my favorite is Ms. Goshsquash and her bison, the illustration is really cute.

I would recommend this book for teachers, parents and also for learners of English as second or foreign language.