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edited by Chris Duffy introduction by Leonard S. Marcus First Second  2011 Fifty timeless rhymes! From fifty celebrated cartoonists! At least forty-nine excellent classic nursery rhymes in a cartoon format! There are a number of ways to approach nursery rhymes. You can either take them at their most surface story level. You can interpret them literally or figuratively or historically. You

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My students Susan Corbitt and Katie Allen created this comprehensive readers' guide for The Green Mother Goose by Jan Peck and David Davis. Lots of great ideas here!

The Green Mother Goose:
Saving the World One Rhyme at a Time
By Jan Peck and David Davis
Illustrated by Carin Berger
New York: Sterling. ISBN 9781402765254.
Recommended age level: 4 – 8


Summary of Book:
Mother Goose has gone green in this recycled book of 30 familiar Mother Goose rhymes. Jack Pratt addresses healthy eating in this new green version where he eats junk food fat and outgrows his pants. This Little Piggy saves water, bikes, uses alternative energy and squealed “Re-re-recycle!” all the way home; Mother Hubbard shops with cloth grocery bags. This eco-friendly picture book introduces recycling, organic gardening, free-range chickens, alternative energy, and protecting the environment to children through the use of nursery rhymes. The illustrations further the eco-friendly theme by creating collages from ticket stubs, newspapers, and other reused items. The book is printed with soy-based ink on paper made from mixed sources including recycled wood and fibers.

Review Excerpts:
School Library Journal
“Peck and Davis whimsically rework 30 familiar rhymes with eco-friendly issues and concerns: recycling, organic gardening, free-range chickens, and the benefits of conserving. Most of the rhymes are fun and readable, even rousing at times, though a few are forced and didactic. Berger's collage illustrations crafted from found papers, including ticket stubs and newsprint, add to the book's folksy appeal. Inventive and hopeful, this should strike the right note for Earth Day celebrations.”

Publishers Weekly
“Peck and Davis deliver their missive with humor and a touch of snark, but the often self-righteous tone drains much of the fun.”

Booklist - Diane Foote
“More suitable for teaching about ecology and conservation than simple sharing for fun, this collection of fractured nursery rhymes will be received best by kids who already know the original versions and will appreciate the green twist. These versions are cleverly done and retain the rhythms of the originals while updating the language and the message. The moralistic tone (“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, / Refused to garden green. / her toxic sprays, a choking haze, / Spreading dangers, hurtful and mean”) isn’t likely to win many converts, although kids already on the green bandwagon will welcome the reinforcement.”

Kirkus
“For this collection of 30 poems, not only nursery rhymes but also familiar children's songs have been given new lyrics promoting energy conservation activities and healthy living. Their strong message is leavened by Berger's whimsical, inventive illustrations, which lighten the tone. These illustrations invite close inspection, while the poems will be welcomed in schools where going green is a value.”

Questions to ask before reading the book: Invite the children to discuss the following:

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Detective Blue
by Steve Metzger
illustrated by Ted Arnold
Orchard Books/Scholastic, July 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

You be the detective! There are 24 Mother Goose rhymes hidden in the story and pictures of this hard-boiled detective story (which comes in the form of a graphic novel/picture book mash up).

Detective Blue, whose horn-blowing and cow-tending have been left in his past, makes short work of the crimes that come his way -- the dish running away with the spoon, Mary's lamb trying to sneak into school wearing a disguise. Then Jack Sprat comes running down the street yelling (not because someone offered him a fatty sandwich), "Miss Muffet is missing! Miss Muffet is missing!" and Detective Blue is on the case. He follows clues that take him from Little Bo Peep to Humpty Dumpty to Jack's Corner Pie Shop. Never fear, there's a fairy tale ending. (Literally.)

I can't wait to share this book with kids! It's a fun story with kid-sized literary allusions. It's got Ted Arnold's Fly Guy-style illustrations. It's a great (quick) model of the conventions of the mystery genre. It's a great (big-enough-to-share-with-a-group) model of the conventions of graphic novels. And there's that checklist of 24 Mother Goose rhymes that will pull kids back into the story until they find them all.

If you buy one book this summer/week, this should be the one.

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I have been a fan of J. Otto Seibold since he came on the children's picture book scene with Monkey Business. His artwork was so fresh and inspired me in new and different ways. In my opinion, J. Otto's work broke new ground on both children's as well as digital illustration.

He is still coming out with fresh and exciting and different new work! J. Otto's newest book is "Other Goose: Re-nurseried and re-rhymed! Chidren's Classics", his re-imagining of Mother Goose. When I came home from a trip last week, my husband had some gifts waiting for me and this book was among them, lucky me!

Check out some of the book here in a slide show presentation (scroll down and you will see it) or pick up the book on Amazon.

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The Very Best Mother Goose Book Tower. By Iona Opie. Illustrated by Rosemary Wells. 2010. (February 2010). Candlewick. 80 pages.

Earlier in the month, I reviewed Maisy's Book Tower. I started my review by asking if the product was a book or a toy! I still don't have the perfect answer for that one. Because this is really the first time that I've encounter stacking book towers. (Books meant to serve dual purposes as a book-book and stacking blocks.) We've got four books included in this set. Jack and Jill And Other Classic Rhymes. Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat And Other Animal Rhymes. Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake And Other Action Rhymes. Wee Willie Winkie And Other Lullabies.

Mother Goose can be tricky at times because there are more than a few variations to the text itself. And it can be frustrating (at times, at least for some readers) for the book to "get it wrong." For example, I got a little annoyed that "I'm A Little Teapot" is all wrong:

I'm a little teapot,
short and stout,
Here's my handle,
Here's my spout.
When the tea is ready,
hear me shout,
Pick me up and
pour me out!

Overall, I think there's a good mix of rhymes that are familiar (or familiar enough at any rate) and completely unfamiliar. Some of these are ones that I've not come across before.

© Becky Laney of Young Readers

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Now it's time to go to sleep,
Tomorrow I will find my sheep.

If home if where they want to be,
I guess they will come back to me.

Which Mother Goose character is this?

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Karma Wilson is the author of some 28 picture books, featuring her recurring “Bear” and “Calico” (cat) characters, but she branches out with a new collection of some 100+ poems in the hilarious anthology, What’s the Weather Inside? With perfectly matched pen and ink drawings by New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt, and a “Postcard” font that suggests handwritten poems, this collection evokes Shel Silverstein in its look, sound, and feel. Wilson’s collection is big on humor, and kids are sure to love the rollicking rhymes that hit on many of their favorite topics such as pets, siblings, and school. (An index of titles and an index of first lines are also included, which is always nice.) She also plays with point of view, surprise endings, pairing poems, and my favorite, fairy tale and Mother Goose parodies.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel
by Karma Wilson

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
don’t be a dope.
Cut off your hair
and make your own rope.

Wilson, Karma. 2009. What's the Weather Inside? New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 116.

Other “riffs” include “Miss Muffet’s Revenge,” “The Beast and the Beauty,” “Golden Eggs,” and “Mary Had an Appetite.” Kids will love creating their own parody of a favorite rhyme, tale, or song. Post theirs alongside a version of the original. And on Karma’s Web site, kids can “take a favorite poem and rewrite it sillier” and send it to Karma and possibly get it posted on her Web site.

The poems in What’s the Weather Inside? also lend themselves beautifully to being read aloud. Start with one about teachers, “Red-Letter Day.” Then, invite students to join in on poems with repeated lines like “She’s my sister and I missed her” in “What I Missed” or “My parents want to sit down” from “Sit-Downs.” Even young children who can’t read independently yet (or children learning English as a new language) can join in on a repeated word or phrase while the adult leader reads the rest.

Older students can plan with a partner and take turns reading paired poems or poems for two voices such as these:
“What Your Dog Might Be Thinking” and “What Your Cat Might Be Thinking” or
“A List of Lovely Words” and “A List of Ugly Words.”

FYI: This is one of several poetry books that Simon & Schuster is publishing this spring for which I wrote a downloadable Poetry Guide available online here. Scroll down halfway and you’ll find the “Poetry Guide” link. Check it out!

Image credit: karmawilson.com

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Mother Goose - Random House, 1949

Diana, one of my co-writers on Women Only Over Fifty (WOOF), is my guest blogger today. She was inspired to write about a very unusual Wisconsin bookstore that was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. (Video Segment below)

We love books, right? But just how much? Enough to set aside 12 buildings on our rural property where we house one million (yes, MILLION) tomes? Sure, we would if we could. But you gotta admit, THAT amount of effort takes an amazing passion for books.

Central Wisconsin, off County Road K, that’s where Lloyd Dickman cultivates wheat and corn while his wife Lenore grows the book collection. The Dickman’s bookstore is open regular business hours on Saturday and anytime by appointment…or if you happen to find them stocking shelves and not out procuring more books.

During an interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Lenore, who rather likes her Dickman system for cataloging instead of Dewey’s, pointed to a book table she says is the most important of all. The table does not labor under the weight of leather-bound classics like “Tale of Two Cities” or “Les Miserable.” Rather small, colorful reads such as “Mother Goose.”

“If a child knows eight nursery rhymes by the time he is four years old,” said Lenore, now retired, but who, with her husband’s support and sacrifice, earned a PhD, “that child will be an excellent reader by the time he is eight years old.”

Personally, I have to trust the opinion of someone ensconced by that much paper and ink; a person who when additional book space was needed, cleaned out, fixed up and roofed a huge storage bin that once held cow manure. Actually, that project was Lloyd’s contribution. Soon he’s going to turn over one-third of his tractor garage to Lenore’s ever-expanding stockpile.

That’ll bring their bookstore “chain” to 13. All that without serving one cup of coffee or surfacing the long dirt road leading to their store.

Yeah, one has to love books nearly as much as they do to venture out to their place. And that’s exactly what the Dickman’s count on.



CBS Sunday Morning - Bill Geist reporting

Women Only Over Fifty (WOOF) Summer 2008! (Echelon Press)

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Every year brings new collections of Mother’s Goose rhymes—some re-envisioned in modern contexts, others harkening back to a more classic interpretation. Ruth Sanderson’s new collection falls into the latter category, and offers a pretty, romantic backdrop of illustrations for an extensive gathering of nearly 70 nursery rhymes, plus a handful of poems with poets attributed (like “The Purple Cow”) that all fit together beautifully. An introduction provides interesting background information on Sanderson's selection and illustration process, and reminds us that “repeating the verses makes learning to speak a great game.” Thus, Sanderson has featured rhymes simply and directly with single stanzas and colorful illustrations that make the verses accessible and memorable for the very young child. Images of children in pinafores and knickers alongside delicate fairies and whimsical trolls, in settings of inviting meadows and forests, add a quaint and magical element. I probably don’t have to share a sample Mother Goose rhyme since these are so widely familiar, but I was pleased to find a new “Mary” rhyme to accompany the familiar “Mary had a little lamb.” At least, it was new to me!

Mary Had a Pretty Bird

Mary had a pretty bird,
Feathers bright and yellow;
Slender legs, upon my word,
He was a pretty fellow.
The sweetest notes he always sang,
Which quite delighted Mary;
And near the cage she’d always sit
To hear her own canary.

From: Sanderson, Ruth. 2008. Mother Goose and Friends. New York: Little, Brown, p. 56.

Picture credit: www.goldenwoodstudio.com

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Just reading a Times online review of Proust and the Squid: The Story of Science and the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. Steph at Crooked House has been talking about this one and I'd happily be reading the actual book if I had it to hand.

Here's a little of the review:

Meanwhile, Wolf offers practical advice to parents on how to encourage children’s reading. Being talked to, read to and listened to all matter. It is estimated that, by the age of five, a child in a home where lots of talking goes on will have heard 32m more words spoken than a child in a linguistically impoverished household. How often a child has stories read to it in its first five years is a dependable predictor of its later reading skills, and how the reading is done makes a difference. Sitting on a parent’s knee to be read to means that the child will link reading with being loved. Nursery rhymes, with their alliterations and assonances, train children’s ears and brains in the phoneme recognition that they need for reading.

Unfortunately, Wolf’s advice will not reach those who need it most. What her findings amount to is that many children are already failures before they go to school, because they come from semi-literate, semi-articulate homes. How to alter that (short of Plato’s solution, which was to take all children from their parents at birth and bring them up properly), nobody knows.


There's something a little funny about all of this. Maybe it's the idea it gave me that I'd only had a child so I could "read to it." But mostly, this kind of research just serves to tell us what we already know - the first years are key and that children raised in non-reading homes miss out on that critical period.

But is there really nought to be done? Here's a link to an article
I wrote ages ago about Mother Goose programs.

And here's the site for the Canadian Parent-Child Mother Goose program.

Here's what they say about the history of the program:

In 1984, Barry Dickson, a social worker and storyteller who worked with a large caseload of families who had barriers to bonding, and Joan Bodger, a therapist and storyteller, planned a pilot project that would serve families identified as “at risk” by the Toronto Children’s Aid Society, a child protection agency. The Mother Goose Enrichment Program was based on Barry’s experiments using rhymes and stories with the children in his care and on Joan’s experience in the New York City Head Start Program and her deep conviction of the value of using rhymes and stories orally with children and adults. Celia Lottridge and Katherine Grier, both storytellers and educators, taught in the program with Joan.

The idea was to begin at the beginning with the relationship between parent and baby or young child, and to use the pleasure and power of rhymes, songs and stories taught and experienced orally in a group setting to nurture the parent-child relationship and to foster family wellness.


It kind of makes so much sense it hurts. Also, while I have you here, have you read Joan Bodger's autobiography, The Crack in the Teacup? You'll have to read How The Heather Looks first, but really you should be reading that one anyhow.

And here is a very nice Mother Goose rhyme, courtesy of Barbara Reid's latest book:

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Mother Goose...a nice compilation of stories with lessons, great illustrations and little rhymes. I still look at it every time I start a new project. This is what Mother Goose would look like in my world!
www.candaceillustration.blogspot.com

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Author: Judy Sierra
Illustrator: Jack E. Davis
Published: 2005 Harcourt Inc
ISBN: 0152054170 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Full of richly detailed, hilariously disgusting illustrations and fiendishly twisted traditional verse, this collection of poems is a year-round favourite.

Tags:book, children, disgusting, gross, halloween, hilarious, humour, mother goose, picture, podcast, poetry, reviewbook, children, disgusting, gross, halloween, hilarious, humour, mother goose, picture, podcast, poetry, review

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