The Random House Book of Mother Goose
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.