Customer Reviews

A Rocket in My Pocket: The Rhymes and Chants of Young Americans (An Owlet Book)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book at least 100 times and I still love it to this day, 26 years later.

I just read the other reviews of this book and feel compelled to add that it had a similarly profound effect on my life. It is only published every 20 years--1947, 1967, 1987 and hopefully again in 2007. It is the best children's book ever--an unrivalled compilation of timeless--and non-commercial--poems and rhymes. Only Shel Silverstein has come close to achieving the same greatness. I learned the whole book by heart as a child and my grown up sisters and I still recite the rounds together when we are feeling silly. Everyone should have this book in their permanent collection.

I thought I was the only one who remembered this book. Its so hard to find a copy these days I was starting to wonder if I had imagined it's existence. It was this book and NOT Dr. Sydney Friedman, of M*A*S*H fame that can be credited with the gem, "Ladies and Gentlemen take my advice, take off your pants and slide on the ice." Among other things, this book shaped and validated my sense of humor.

I was delighted to receive this book in good order and excellent time. Many thanks to all concerned.The content was very enlightening and showed how American children's rhymes are very similar to Australian ones.
Regards from Bev Cockburn.

I am so excited to find this book after all these years! I was in grade school in the 70's, and this was one of the most popular books in our library! After all these years, I can still recite many of the poems in it! I can't wait to show it to my boys.

When this book became available in my grade school library 45 years ago or so, you had to get on list to check it out because it was so popular. My kids today enjoy as much as I did then.

A compilation of over 400 child-propagated chants and sayings, this book was compiled from hundreds of interviews with children and adults. It is re-issued every 20 years, and presumably updated with more modern material.
The Good and the Bad:
As an adult with an interest in such things, I thought that the book was interesting as a reference. There were a handful of somewhat obscure sayings that I had heard of, either as a childhood and an adult, and seeing these in black and white was kind of exciting. But from that perspective, I wanted more information about where each verse came from, and what might have motivated its survival. So, it's usefulness as a reference was very limited. On the other hand, it didn't necessarily do well as entertainment either, because of the sheer volume of nonsense rhymes that quickly began to blur into each other. Explicatory text between rhymes, or even between chapters, would have made the book less of a slog. As it was, I was just skimming each verse, looking for the gems. Also, this early edition of the book had some racist shadings on a few of the rhymes. As a repository of history, I support inclusion rather than omission; however, the illustrations created specifically for the book were objectionable in my mind, and the target audience is apparently children, so they should probably be purged.
It was interesting to me to noted that the customer reviews on Amazon were from three lone rabid fans, who each said that they loved the book as children themselves. I suppose that I shouldn't pooh-pooh the entertainment value for children, as the effect is similar to a collection of nursery rhymes.