Granfa' Grig Had a Pig and Other Rhymes Without Reason

My Grandparents bought this book for me when I was born. Even when I was very small, nursery rhymes had little interest for me. However, the illustrations in this book always held me riveted. Unfortunately, that book was lost in a move at some point. Now that I have a boy of my own, I'm buying a copy of it for him. If you want your child(ren) to be prolific readers, the first step is buying books with detailed, interesting illustrations. This is a great place to start. I highly recommend it.

This is a book for the nursery rhyme set that erudite parents will enjoy as well. It has one or two standards (some not so standard) per page, cleverly illustrated with a wide range of the cutest anthropomorphic animals since Walt Kelly's "Pogo". The rhymes and pictures alone would make it a three-star book, a good standard collection. But there's more. Mr. Tripp has his animals make little asides, much like the penguin in "Oliphant", and scatters sight gags liberally throughout his illustrations. For "Higglety-pigglety, my black hen, she lays eggs for gentlemen", for instance, a happy bear admires the hen and says "egg-squisite".A list of four dozen contestants at a pie eating contest includes "Sally Forth" and "Robin Banks". Scattered about the clouds for "There was an old woman tossed on a blanket" are a pretty complete set of milestones from aviation history; spitfire, sopwith camel, X-1, mercury capsule, and a fellow with a dozen swans in a silken harness.I was glad I bought the hardcover edition; the paperback would have worn out.