The Real Mother Goose

Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright

Hey, hey, hey!  It's the full book!  And it's widely available and constantly being reprinted.

This is a great compilation of all the essential nursery rhymes with tons of early 20th century Classical revival style illustrations.  Very Ars Nouveau, I think.

I'm no art historian, and I recognize that that description is kind of terrible.

 Look at this Robin Hood.  So effeminate.  Tall and lean with a baby face.  Pale blended watercolours with a fine outline.  I love it.

There are many, many full page illustrations, and most pages have smaller illustrations intertwined with the text.

The text is a little old fashioned.  A lot of death and gore and stuff, just the way it's always been.  But you can always pick and choose which rhymes you read aloud.  It's a big thick hardcover.

100 Things that Make Me Happy

 By Amy Schwartz

This book is great.  The art is cute, the happy things are well chosen, and it's easy enough for a beginner reader to fumble through.

 No sentences!  My daughter is trying to read, but more than two words in a row is way too much work.  This book was great to open at random and read together.

The rhymes work, the rhythm doesn't.  But it isn't supposed to be rhythmic in the least and doesn't have any kind of pattern, so that's refreshing.

The Kingfisher Playtime Treasury

 Selected by Pie Corbett
Illustrated by Moira and Colin Maclean

This is a pretty good collection of children's rhymes, skipping rhymes, schoolyard games and the like.  They're appropriate for children a minimum of three years old.  There's lots of variety and they're organized by category.  A lot of heavily gendered rhymes about kissing boys and getting married, but that's because they're traditional. Some of the wording is not what I'm used to.

I'm planning on using it for upcoming birthday parties.

 The art looks like it's stolen from Janet Ahlberg.  They included Each Peach Pear Plum, though they use different lines.

And they seem to have a Jolly Postman, too.

Really weird.  But I guess Janet is dead now, so it's fair game?

Math Fables - Lessons that Count

 By Greg Tang
Illustrated by Heather Cahoon

This is a great idea, and my daughter does ask to read it, but in practice it's a little too much in one book.

All the numbers from one to ten are represented, and each number has stories for every possible equation.

 This works well for the first few numbers.  We like to read about the squirrels and divide them up into two and two or one and three.  Great.

But later on, it gets really boring.  Especially nine and ten.  We've never read through the story about the ants.  Two eat watermellon and eight eat cheese.  Three took home bread and seven took home lettuce.  etc. etc. etc. until little hands are all over the book forcefully turning pages to get you to stop.

The rhyming and meter are pretty dreadful.  But seeing as my daughter likes the beginning and it IS actually educational, I give this one a pass.

Bread and Jam for Frances

 By Russell Hoban
Illustrated by Lillian Hoban

This is a classic.  Francis is a great character, and we love, love, love this particular story.  It's another one of those "teach your kid to love food" books.  Except it isn't about the parent knowing that the child is just faking their dislike of anything but chicken strips.

 In this particular story, Francis just doesn't like being adventurous with food and is satisfied with the predictability of bread and jam.  Her parents let her eat bread and jam forever and eat tasty other things in front of her until she breaks down and cries.  It's a bit much.  But it's told in a charming enough way that I don't mind reading it anyway.  And Francis is delighted in the end to go to school and have a large and varied lunch that rivals her friend Albert's.

Now, I know kids like this, and my own kids are picky some days because they don't feel like being adventurous, and I get it.  I give them opportunities to try things without forcing them, but if I know that she's being unreasonable then I will put my foot down and force her to take a bite.  She can always ask for things that aren't on the table as long as she makes some effort towards something on her plate, which ultimately ends up in her discovering that she actually likes what I've made for dinner, anyway.  We know eachother's limits and we both make compromises.

And you know what?  Treating my kids fairly and letting them decide what they like and don't like and giving them options has worked great.  Occasionally forcing or bribing them to try things has worked out fine, too.  I guess the key thing is to know your kids and to work out a tactic that they won't find frustrating.

Books about kids with bad habits don't work.  Not unless they have a direct message to the reader about how they should change their ways.  Subtlety like this goes right over my three year old's head.

Dive In!

 By April Jones Prince
Illustrated by Michelle Berg

This is a favourite in the house.  There are fights.

The writing is really bad.  Nothing makes any sense to babies, or even toddlers.  They should have not tried to rhyme any of it.

But the concept is cute.  Working mice coming out with all of their machines and equipment to fill the bathtub with water and toys.

All of the movable pieces are super sturdy. Nothing has been broken on this book yet!  My toddler is mesmerized every time he sits down with it.

We're Going to the Farmers' Market

 By Stephan Page

You know me.  I'm a pretty big hippie.  And I'm all about fruits and veg and farmers' markets.  But I picked this book up primarily because the art was appealing.  It was the nicest looking book at the library that week and, believe me, I looked through each one.  I thought maybe my son would recognize the food and be mildly interested.  Plus it's in verse, and he will currently only sit still for board books with verse.

Well, the verse is not metered.  They tried and failed.  Badly.  So my son hated it because he's so damn picky.

 But the pictures are still nice.  Lots of geometric  shapes and symmetry and simple colours and patterns.  It's very pretty.

I wish there was no text.  They tried to do a version of "To Market, To Market to Buy a Fat Pig" and got lost in this sustainability message.  It's so heavy handed that it felt like they were trying to make my children feel bad for straying from the 100 mile diet.

Plus, this meal.  Like, I would eat that, sure.  And I always serve good food for my kids.  We eat food from just about any culture and keep a variety of spices in the house.  But my one year old is not eating fish and olives.  In fact, he's teething and refuses anything that isn't blended into mush and snuck into his mouth in between bites of cracker.  And furthermore, with a baby in the house, is it possible to make labour intensive meals?  No, really, I'm curious.  When do I get to stop making casseroles?  Also, I don't take kids to market under the age of 3 if I can help it because grabbing groceries and paying for them with an angry toddler in your arms is the worst experience.

Is this a board book that teaches toddlers about everything they're missing out on because they can't get it together and eat real food and behave at the store?  Or is this is a board book for 6 year olds?  I can't decide.

Max and Ruby's Treasure Hunt

By Rosemary Wells

My husband hates the art in these books, but I guess I'm just used to it from my childhood.  I don't have any serious attachment to these books, but they aren't bad.

 This one is a treasure hunt.  The clues are hidden in an envelope that folds down!  Exciting!  If only the answers are easy enough for a three year old to get.  But just in case, they put pictures of the answers all over each page.  Kind of frustrating.  But exciting for kids.  There was a lot of standing up and yelling out the answers.

They get a little into rhyming at one point.  Here, they have different things that rhyme with "Hickory Dickory Dock".  Hmmm...  Which of these did the mouse run up?

This is kind of nice, because it's where we're at with learning to read.  My daughter was willing to work out what the words were.

All in all, it's a pretty decent activity/story book.

Snuggle Puppy

 By Sandra Boynton

Boynton does some nice baby books, some of which my kids are crazy about, some of which are funnier to read as an older kid or adult, but there are some real duds, too.  Like this one.

It comes with a CD with music that you listen to while you read the lyrics.

 I can't really be bothered to say a lot about this.  The drawing is pretty lazy.  Most of the book is just colourful text.  The text itself is really, really lazy rhyming.

But, I guess if you like this sort of thing, then whatever.  It's not the worst book I've ever read.

Over the Hills and Far Away

 By Chris Conover

This is exactly the kind of book that I would like to write.  It's a traditional nursery rhyme illustrated stanza by stanza with gorgeous and engaging pictures.

The final two pages have an arrangement of the melody with some accompaniment.

Changes I would make are that the melody should have been present in some manner on the main pages so that I could sight sing as I read (maybe even with chords so that I can play guitar and read it.)  The arrangement at the end seemed a little iffy for piano.  It would have been nice if it had been an early/intermediate level piano piece for a young student.

All in all, it's pretty great, though.

Bumble-ardy

 By Maurice Sendak

This book was fairly disappointing.  I guess Sendak is an illustrator first and foremost.  The illustrations are top-notch.

 The story starts out talking about how Bumble's parents are dead so he's never had a birthday party.  The rest of the story is told in awkward rhyme about a crazy party he secretly holds at his aunts house.  The ending is good because she's crazy mad and has a fit, but can't stay mad because she loves him so, and they make up.

Most of it is just an excuse to draw frightening pictures of the party with no accompanying text.  They're great pictures.  But my daughter found them totally disturbing.  I had to hide the book and send it back to the library.

It's definitely a story geared at younger kids, but the intro and the illustrations are confusing, at best, for young or sensitive children.

It's Only Stanley

 By Jon Agee

Everyone in my house loves this book.  It even made some of us laugh.  It's well thought out.  It's in metered rhyme with no mistakes.  The pictures are entertaining.  So many wonderful things came together here.

 Look at the eyes on that dog.  The expressions everyone's faces are great.  The dad being unphased at each of Stanley's activities is what sells the joke.  He plays against the family, who are losing their minds.  It takes an insane turn at the end that I'm not going to spoil for once.

This book is a keeper.

Ten Little Lambs

 By Alice B. McGinty
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet

This isn't a bad little book.  It's been pretty popular.  It starts out as a sleepover with ten children, but once they're in bed they transform into sheep.

 The text is a repetitive rhyme that counts down from ten to one.  On each page there's a different mischievous activity that the sheep engage in.

Most of the rhythm is good, but not all of it.

On each page, on of the sheep yawns or falls asleep, and the faces of the sleeping sheep who didn't make it through the night are shown along the sides of the pages.  It's pretty engaging.

It's not the best art and not the best poetry, but it's a pretty good concept.  My kids were engaged with it.

The Piggy in the Puddle

 By Charlotte Pomerantz
Illustrated by James Marshall

I picked this one up because it's James Marshall.  The verse rhymes and mostly matches, but there's lots of repetition and my husband and I found it fairly annoying.

 My daughter was nuts about it.  I had to read it again and again.  Lots of rhyming nonsense words.

Obviously the pictures are Fantastic.

The corresponding Reading Rainbow episode is disappointing.  They did a claymation version of it and the models didn't have nearly as much character as the original drawings by Marshall.

Interstellar Cinderellar

 By Deborah Underwood
Illustrated by Meg Hunt

This one isn't bad, except that it's in verse, which is annoying, because it's definitely meant for older kids.  Plus the verses don't cover the details of the story; they'll have a vague explanation of what's going on and fill in the blanks with they picture.  So I end up cutting in with explanations because it's even a little confusing for me at times.

I'm pretty sure they stole the pet mouse and the stepsister's name from the Disney movie.  Which are little examples of a bit of laziness here and there.

But I'm happy that everyone is ugly in this book (but charmingly drawn).  I'm happy that Cinderella is a mechanical nerd.  I'm happy that she actually hangs out with the prince and develops a relationship with him, and STILL decides not to marry him in the end.

It's not perfect, but it's good enough.  Plus, my daughter likes it as much or more as her Disney Cinderella book.

Everything is better when it takes place in space.

Hairy Maclary Scattercat

 By Lynley Dodd

We've been going on a Slinky Malinki binge lately.  We had this in the house for twelve hours and it was read at least twelve times.

 Each page has a different cat that Hairy Maclary chases.  Each cat has a goofy double barrel name. A naming practice I had previously assumed was limited to Australians.

I found my daughter curled up on the couch reading the book aloud to herself, having memorized most of it.  She couldn't remember the names, though, so she made them up.  "Mamsy Pamsy" and "Anto Panto" etc.  SO ADORABLE.

Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes

 Illustrated by Constance Haselwood

Originally printed as a British collection of nursery rhymes in England, it was re-titled and shipped to Canada back when it was first settled.  A copy was found more recently and it was reprinted.

These original illustrations are fantastic.  The rhymes chosen are not all the most popular ones, which makes it a fun little book.  I'm happy that it exists and that I've found it, but it isn't nearly as appealing to my kids as other collections that I've found.

The Lorax

By Dr. Seuss

I assumed this was a classic because they made a movie.  I don't have a lot of positive feelings towards this book.  I mean, I'm an environmentalist, for sure, but this was pretty heavy handed.

I feel like either you tell a morality tale, or you teach kids to read with nonsense words.  I guess it might be possible to combine the two, but this seems to me to be a failed attempt.  Too much compromise on both counts.  No kid learning to read is going to work his way through this many paragraphs. 

The morality part of it seems a little far to the left.  Like, of the "let's all live in the forest and eat bird droppings" variety.  Understand, I'm about as left leaning as they come, politically speaking, and this book still seemed a little weird.  And then the ending is kind of up in the air, which doesn't work for young kids. 

My 3 year old did not understand this story at all.  And was bored.  It's probably appropriate for a 5 year old.  By the time I was 5, I was bored with Dr. Seuss, but to each their own.  Overall, I guess it's okay as a book about sustainable living, but surely there's something better out there that doesn't rhyme?  Maybe even non-fiction?