The Random House Book of Mother Goose [Hardcover]

Arnold Lobel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 1986 | Age Level: 4 and up

An illustrated collection of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, including well-known ones such as "Bah, Bah, Black Sheep" and "Little Boy Blue" and less familiar ones such as "Doctor Foster went to Gloucester" and "When clouds appear like rocks and towers."

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 3 The mysterious and familiar words of Mother Goose are a kind of children's scripture. Whatever gift it requires to freshen something taken as much for granted as these traditional rhymes, Lobel has it. This book is completely Mother Goose's yet completely his own. Lobel frequently groups complementary rhymes together. Rhymes about clothes, for example, appear on one spread; rhymes about food, on another. Every rhyme is distinctly and unforgettably illustrated in a variety of comic strip panels, squares, lunettes, and circles. Occasionally, a full-page or two-page painting enlivens the book. "Humpty-Dumpty," falling, falling, falling in a time-motion study of disaster, is one of the most irresistible of these large drawings. Lobel includes 306 rhymes, more than one-third the number in the Opie's Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, and more than half of those in their Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Impeccably traditional with "Solomon Grundy," he can also lovingly demolish tradition. He is often funniest when he chooses to be literal minded, as when he illustrates Mary's garden sprouting "pretty maids all in a row." This may not be the first choice for a toddler's introduction to Mother GoosedePaola's (Putnam, 1985) or de Angeli's (Doubleday, 1979) illustrations better serve thembut this is the one that slightly older children will turn to again, and find new delights each time. Lobel himself soars with Mother Goose, and she with him. A tour de force. Anna Biagioni Hart, Sherwood Regional Library, Alexandria, Va.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers; First Edition edition (September 12, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394867998
• ISBN-13: 978-0394867991
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,114,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars London bridge is something something down..., February 15, 2004

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Random House Book of Mother Goose (Hardcover)

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good, February 22, 2006

By 

Grass Tiger (Wadsworth, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Random House Book of Mother Goose (Hardcover)

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.