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.

Ring-A-Ring O' Roses

 By Alan Marks

This is a fantastic collection of nursery rhymes.  I've been searching the library for something decent, and this one was hiding in the bookshelf at home.  The words are slightly different than what I'm used to in some cases, but it's close enough to the versions found in the Oxford collections.

Each page has several poems, and the pictures for the poems are blended together.  There's a lot of play with perspective in the paintings and the characters and settings are a-typical.

All of the standard rhymes are in there.  All of my kids' favourites.  I don't think I'll be able to find anything much better than this.

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.

The Real Mother Goose - Book One

 Traditional (Rand McNally & Co)
Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright


These are traditional nursery rhymes.  It's a little board book with a good selection and 1920's style art.

I like it.  It's basic.  It's exactly what I'm looking for in a nursery rhyme book.

Also, I got it second hand for a dollar, so the baby can chew on it.

The Oxford Nursery Treasury

 By Ian Beck

A generic book of Nursery Rhymes!  We've been looking for something for a while, but it's hard to know if something is good or not without seeing it first hand, so I'm going through whatever the library chooses to stock.


 The rhymes are some of the better ones taken from the full Oxford Book.  The accompanying pictures aren't bad, either.

But there are stories as well, and the stories are dreadful.  The tortoise and the hare, for instance, have a bet involving vegetables and they write the hare to be particularly odious so that you can feel particularly great about him losing to the tortoise.  I spent the entirety of "The Princess and the Pea" hoping that the two 12 year old royals didn't end up married at the end (of course, they do), and my daughter didn't care much for the story either; she cut in at the end to ask the only really important question, "DID THEY EAT THE PEAS!?!?"

It was reading this book that made me realize that I really hate most fairy tales.  I can't stand the popular ones, at least.  But I know that if I start in on things like "The Tinder Box" we'll be dealing with nightmares for weeks.  It's a real dilemma.

Friday Post - Canadian Alphabet

We make a point of always pronouncing Z as "zed" in our house, because that's the British/Canadian way.  We were delighted to find that even some of the educational toys that we were given do that.  It almost makes up for how bad the songs and recordings on them are.

In order to continue the rhyme to the end of the song, and also confuse our children, we often make up our own endings.  They include, but are not limited to:

"Now I know my alphabet, and it's time to go to bed."

"Now I know my alphabet.  Let's sing something else instead."

"That's the whole darn alphabet.  Do you think you've learned it yet?"

Mama Don't Allow

 By Thacher Hurd

This is a pretty good story that my two year old could follow with a little bit of translation.  The alligators threaten to eat the main characters in the middle of the book, which might be a bit scary (I don't think she really understood that part at first) but they don't get away with it.  This book hasn't resulted in any nightmares.

 My husband hates this book because the story is written in typed letters on some pages and in speech bubbles on other pages.  I don't mind, personally.  I kind of like it.  He also hates the art, but I think it's got some great colours.  I like the story a lot, too.

On the last page there are lyrics and notation for the song "Mama Don't Allow", just in case the reader is unfamiliar with the song.  They don't have notation, however, for another song that features in the story: "The Lullaby of Swampland".  I find that annoying.  Particularly because the phrasing is uneven, so it's hard to make up a melody for it that works.  But I do what I can, because I'm a mama and that's my job.