Over the Hills and Far Away

 Collected by Elizabeth Hammill

This is a collection of nursery rhymes from "around the world", but mostly just from the states.  They include a fair number of staples from England or Ireland, but they also have some more modern playground rhymes.

 Some of the best rhymes are the Chinese-American ones because they work in English, possibly are originally written in English.

Some of the worst are the Native American rhymes.  Most of the non-English rhymes, in fact, have been translated poorly.  Maybe there's a way to read them that works.  But without any notation to accompany them, they're just rhythmless rhymeless words.

 There are, however, hundreds of poems and songs in this collection.  It's a big heavy book.  So it doesn't really matter that some of them aren't to my liking, because there's tons to choose from.  There's tons of art to choose from, too.  Each set of pages is done by a different artist in a different style.

I don't think I'd buy this book, but it was pretty great to take out of the library.