A Serious Mistake: Part One (A bedtime story)

In case the video isn't, oh... coherent enough:

Outside Over There, by Maurice Sendak

(who will hopefully not sue me.)

When Papa was away at sea,

and Mama in the arbor,

Ida played her wonder horn 

to rock the baby still -

but never watched.

So the goblins came.

They pushed their way in

and pulled baby out,

leaving another all made of ice.

Poor Ida, never knowing, hugged the changeling

and she murmured:  "How I love you."

The ice thing only dripped and stared,

and Ida mad new goblins had been there.

"They stole my sister away!" she cried

"To be a nasty goblin's bride!"

Now Ida in a hurry

snatched her Mama's yellow rain cloak,

tucked her horn safe in a pocket,

and made a serious mistake.

She climbed backwards out her window into outside over there.

Foolish Ida never looking

whirling by the robber caves

heard at last from off the sea

her Sailor Papa's song:

"If Ida backwards in the rain

would only turn around again

and catch those goblins with a tune

she'd spoil their kidnap honeymoon!"

So Ida tumbled right side round and found herself 

smack in the middle of a wedding.

Oh, how those goblins hollered and kicked,

just babies like her sister!

"What a hubbub," said Ida sly,

and she charmed them with a captivating tune.

The goblins, all against their will, danced slowly at first,

then faster until they couldn't breathe.

"Terrible Ida," the goblins said,

"we're dancing sick and must to bed."

But Ida played a frenzied jig, a hornpipe

that makes sailors wild beneath the ocean moon.

Those goblins pranced so fierce, so fast, they quick churned into a dancing stream.

Except for one who lay cozy in an eggshell,

crooning and clapping as a baby should.

And that was Ida's sister.

Now Ida glad hugged baby tight 

and she followed the stream that curled like a path along the broad meadow

and up the ringed-round hill to her Mama in the arbor with a letter from Papa, saying:

"I'll be home one day,

and my brave, bright little Ida

must watch the baby and her Mama

for her Papa, who loves her always."

Which is just what Ida did.