The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose: A Treasury of More Than 300 Classic Nursery Rhymes

I struggled with nursery rhymes with my toddler. They LOVE rhyming at that age, yet the book of my youth (you know, the checkerboard covered version) was inappropriate. My child would choose a rhyme by the picture, and often I couldn't honor his selection. The problem with classic Mother Goose is that about a third of them are violent or somehow inappropriate, and another third are sold Olde Englishe as to be incomprehensible to a 3-year old American. Arnold Lobel's book is perfect on two levels-- it is really well edited. The rhymes are nicely chosen, and he doesn't skimp on stanzas. I think he's filled in some favorites as well-- Little Miss Muffet has a friend scared by another critter, etc. There is some violence, as I believe Mother Goose would be a non-starter without some darkness. The Old Woman in a Shoe "whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed." This always was a bit of a dark poem, but the visual image of the large family in a shoe is engaging enough to love it anyway. The other great thing, of course, is that we do better than mere visual images with Mr. Lobel. The pictures are AWESOME. Each and every rhyme is illustrated, and there are hundreds. The drawings are charming, and not at all dark. Often, they provide the levity that the rhyme may lack. We love this book, and it makes a great baby gift.

This is a pretty extensive collection. Of course most Nursery Rhymes are very short so a few can fit on a page, but still there are many here. Not all the things in this are actually nursery rhymes, for instance, it includes the "Twelve Days of Christmas" (four pages!). Sometimes one nursery rhyme will get two pages because of a very large illustration, for instance the one about how many strawberries grow in the sea is only four lines long. My husband is British and I'm from the USA. We both seem to know different versions of these tales. For instance, it has this: Ring-a-ring-a-roses, A pocket full of posies; Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! We've all tumbled down. My husband knows this with the third line of "A tissue! A tissue" instead. And I know this as: Ring around the rosie Pocket full of posies Ashes. Ashes. We all fall down. Considering this was a plague nursery rhyme (the plague caused a red ring around one's neck and posies were supposed to ward it off), as quite a few of them are (ex. rock-a-bye baby and Wee Willy Wonka), these variations could have started a long time ago and got passed down regionally. This is just one example. So there is a lot of variation out there. But it has been fun going through them reading them to our baby and seeing which ones we each know. I must say I'd never heard of most of them, but it seems all the classics are there.

In the long and varied history of Ms. Mother Goose, so many collections and books of nursery rhymes have been made that it's a wonder anyone keeps track anymore. Certainly I was a child when this particular treasury originally came out and until my current grown state I'd never even heard of it. Illustrated by Arnold Lobel (the nice man who introduced the world to "Frog and Toad") this book is nothing if not extensive. It runs the gamut of rhymes, from classics like "Three Blind Mice" to limericks to tongue-twisters. It is a breathtaking achievement.Many a nursery rhyme book, if extensive, will place two or three rhymes on a page and choose to illustrate only one. Not so Mr. Lobel. It is with great manual dexterity that he has found ways to merge, combine and bring together like-rhymes so as to combine their illustrations into a single motif. Consider his page containing romantic poems. Under around and through a single arbor dwell characters that act out such poems as "Something old, something new", "I love coffee", "Roses are red", and "If you love me, love me true". Poems about the weather, food, and royalty are similarly grouped. Longer poems, such as the classic "Partridge in a pear tree" are given full page multi-spreads. Lobel is nothing if not meticulous in his craft.I did have an occasional objection. Though the book is expertly indexed, there is not so much as an author's note or preface explaining where he got these poems. The title page merely reads, "Selected and illustrated by Arnold Lobel", with scant attention to exactly WHERE he got them. This isn't idle curiosity either. More than one of these poems contains wordings different from those known to the pubic at large. For example, instead of the poem "London Bridge is falling down" we read that "London Bridge is broken down". Or smaller changes, such as making a ha' penny a half penny in "Christmas is coming". Diligent parents beware. This book abounds with capital punishment and death. Much like the early fairy tales, nursery rhymes weren't always for the kiddie set. Adults liked them just as much. In the edition I happened to borrow from the library, some extraordinarily concerned parents took offense to a couple phrases in "This is the house that Jack built" (changing "That killed the rat" to "That bumped the rat" and "That waked the priest all shaved and shorn" to "That waked the minister all shaved and shorn"). Oog.In the end, this is really a fabulous collection. The illustrations are adept (containing some very funny interpretations as well) and the rhymes not only familiar but enjoyable. If you don't mind the occasional change to the text here and there it is well worth your casual perusal and enjoyment.

Formerly published as "The Random House Book of Mother Goose" in 1986, this new hardback reissue pays homage to the late Arnold Lobel, the famed Caldecott winning illustrator of the beloved "Frog and Toad" books, "On Market Street" and more than 100 others. This treasury of more than 300 classic nursery rhymes represents more than three years of toil for Lobel, and was the crowning achievement of his amazing career in children's literature. Despite the massive undertaking, Lobel never skimped here. Every rhyme - no matter how brief -- has a beautiful corresponding drawing, and many, many entries feature six or more images. Even for lengthy poems like "The First Day of Christmas" and "The House That Jack Built," he refused to take shortcuts, and so drew increasingly complicated images for each and every verse. Not everything was taken literally, however, and so the pages for other poems offer a rich diversity of characters. On one double-page spread, for instance, Lobel cleverly grouped unrelated verses and united them by drawing a variety of pigs for each disparate scene. Even as presented in this unabridged new edition today -- nearly two decades since the illustrations were created -- the fun, colorful and imaginative drawings are fresh, offering a delightful introduction to the classic 18th Century Mother Goose rhymes and assorted other gems for generations of children to come.

I bought this when my son was a baby, but just brought it out now that he is three. Both of us have really enjoyed it. It has all the rythmes I was familair with plus so many I didn't know. I also now found an old source (Mother Goose) of some Barney songs we know! I particularly like that the illustrations are beautiful and truly representative of the rythme. So many other books dress animals up like people to illustrate Mother Goose. I like rythmes about little boys to show little boys and not pigs! This has confused my son. I highly recommend it and have since given it to several friends with small children.