Jacqueline Goose

Mother Goose finally retired after centuries of dodging lawsuits from parents asking why every nursery rhyme ended with property damage, unexplained livestock, or children making truly questionable life choices. She packed her knitting, waved goodbye, and handed the entire nursery rhyme empire to her daughter, Jacqueline. Unfortunately… Jacqueline has opinions. She has declared that the classics are outdated. Why is Humpty Dumpty sitting on walls with no safety rail? Why are children following strangers playing flutes? Why is an old woman stuffing an unreasonable number of children into a shoe instead of just buying a bigger house. It’s time to modernize this whole mess. Jack and Jill now have insurance claims. The Three Little Pigs have building inspectors. Little Bo Peep installed GPS trackers on her sheep. And every rhyme is getting a rewrite whether the characters like it or not. There is just one tiny problem. As part of the inheritance, Jacqueline also received Frank. Frank is her mother’s legendary gander. Calling him “temperamental” is like calling a tornado “a light breeze.” Frank wakes up every morning and chooses violence. He has chased kings off their horses, bitten witches, terrorized delivery drivers, and once started an international incident because someone looked at him funny. No one knows how old he is. Some suspect he predates civilization itself. Mother Goose claimed Frank was “a sweetheart once he gets to know you.” No one has survived long enough to confirm that. Now Jacqueline must balance rewriting the world’s most famous nursery rhymes while managing an immortal feathered menace with anger issues, an inflated ego, and a personal vendetta against anyone wearing shiny shoes. Welcome to the next generation of nursery rhymes. The stories are getting an update. Frank, however, remains completely unpatched.