title: I'll Take You to Mrs Cole!
author:  Nigel Gray 
description: For this story's protagonist, a visit to the title character is the ubiquitous punishment threatened by his harried mother. Naturally, Mrs. Cole's has swelled to Dickensian proportions in the boy's imagination--he pictures slimy dungeons and children being starved, whipped and possibly even stewed. One day the boy decides to run away; ending up at Mrs. Cole's, he discovers--of course--that she's not at all as he feared. A thoroughly irresistible character (one scene finds her rocking out in the kitchen, singing into a whisk/microphone and sporting an apron emblazoned with Mick Jagger), Mrs. Cole presides over a cheerfully raucous, wildly untidy household overflowing with children, music, games and pets of every persuasion--in short, all of the ingredients missing from a lonely latchkey child's life. While somewhat over the top, Gray's story is sympathetic, humorous and a rollicking read-aloud. Though Foreman's bizarre, oversized figures may strike some as excessively loopy, his palette accentuates the story's transition--like Dorothy arriving in Oz, the boy's home life (cool shades of blue, gray and lavender) gives way to the warm, bright hues of the fun-loving Mrs. Cole's. Ages 5-11. <br />Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  _For Dad. And his shed._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  _‘Mr Grey?’_
  
  
  
  
  
  _‘I keep telling you, Olivia, call me Colin. Mr Grey sounds so formal. Now,
  what is it?’_
  
  
  
  
  
  _‘There’s someone down here in the lobby, Mr Grey. She says she needs to see
  you. She says it’s urgent.’_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I bite my lip, pensively. She? It must be a woman._
  
  
  
  
  
  _‘What’s her name? Does she have an appointment?’_
  
  
  
  
  
  _‘No, Mr Grey, and she won’t tell me her name, but she’s very insistent. She
  says she knows you.’_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I gaze out of the twentieth-floor window at the vast, sprawling metropolis
  from behind my vast, sprawling desk and frown. Who could it be?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _‘Very well,’ I reply eventually, ‘Send her up.’_
  
  
  
  
  
  _‘Yes, Mr Grey.’_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I lay the receiver back on its cradle. As I await my mysterious visitor, my
  steel grey eyes roll around my vast, sprawling office, entirely white from
  floor to ceiling apart from a mosaic of
  
  
  small monoch