Glorious Mother Goose

In this unique volume, some of the best work of L. Leslie Brooke, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, John Lawson, Arthur Rackham and many more appear together in 55 full-color and 34 black-and-white pieces.

PreSchool-Grade 3 At first glance, this book appears to be primarily for collectors, and it will appeal to that audience. There are, however, many enjoyable and rewarding ways to share this work with children. The Mother Goose rhymes included are among the most familiar; but the illustrations, selected from books published from the 1870s through the 1930s, are rich in their varied interpretations of these rhymes. Sometimes they are totally different in content, as with the pictures accompanying "Pat-a-Cake" or "This Little Pig Went to Market," in which one illustration portrays the more literal interpretation while the other shows the activity or baby game associated with the text. Thus, readers see Brooke's bold, opulent pig with market basket on his arm alongside an anonymous artist's image of an older child playing with a younger child's toes. Some pairings show different segments of a rhyme, as with the juxtaposition of Pinwell's black-and-white drawing of "Simple Simon" with the pie man at the fair and Robinson's larger, full-color image of him fishing in a pail. In other instances, the age ("Curly Locks"), the gender ("Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"), or the mood ("Little Miss Muffet") of human characters differ. Adults may find in this book a wonderful way to demonstrate various means of interpretation of text to children as well as sharing with them some of the rich heritage of children's book illustration. Kay E. Vandergrift, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.