Who Killed Cock Robin?
(AKA The Dead and Burial of Cock Robin)

An Alternative Robin - Inner City Death

Nikki Giovanni and Eve Merriam both point out in their introductions that many original Mother Goose rhymes are believed to have derived from political satire. Those rhymes were not written for children but were co-opted, as it was, by the nursery. Merriam wrote her own satires, based on some of the better know Mother Goose stories, intended to draw the public's attention to various problems plaguing the inner city. Sadly, the poems in this book seem as immediate now as they did in the1960s when they were written.

"Who Killed Nobody?" begins with familiar question. The killer is a cop, who used his off-duty gun. As in the original, no motive is given; his mother saw him die; a brother caught his blood; neighbors carried the coffin.

The illustration, like all the full page pictures, has a heavy black frame. In this case, it is broken by the arm of the sprawling body. The gun is smoking; the dead man has blood spreading on his chest. The killer, dressed in green and yellow, strands in the lower left of the image, head tilted away from the body, but eyes gazing back. The line formed by his eyes leads directly to the eyes of the dead man, who lies head toward the bottom of the picture, legs curled at the knees behind him, drawing the view to the crowd behind him, all dressed in blue and white (as is he) save a woman in a red dress. She, presumably the bereaved mother, is supported by two men. Another man has both hands the air, mouth open, raising the alarm, and a forth male bystander has his hands over his eyes. It's a crowded scene, yet the killer is isolated by the colors he wears and the fact that the other living people are standing more or less in a line that he is not part of. The sky is blue, with a few fluffy white clouds; nature is seems, is indifferent to this tragedy, as is everyone outside the dead man's immediate circle.

Could the artsit of this new edition be calling attention to an issue not raised in the text - black on black violence, perpetrated by those who are established in the main stream culture on those who are powerless.