The Opie Book of Nursery Rhymes

by Iona Opie, Peter Opie, Pauline Baynes (Illustrator)

This treasury of memorable verses, collected by two of the foremost authorities on children's lore, contains favorite nursery rhymes found in folk literature as well as less familiar rhymes passed down in regional or family traditions. Annotated and indexed both by subject and by first lines, and illustrated with classic black-and-white line drawings, this book is both a useful resource and a delight for children everywhere.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Iona Margaret Balfour Archibald was born in Colchester, Essex, England. She was a researcher and writer on folklore and children's street culture. She is considered an authority on children's rhymes, street and playground games and the Mother Goose tradition. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1998 and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999.

The couple met during World War II and married on 2 September 1943. The couple worked together closely, from their home near Farnham, Surrey, conducting primary fieldwork, library research, and interviews of thousands of children. In pursuing the folklore of contemporary childhood they directly recorded rhymes and games in real time as they were being sung, chanted, or played. Working from their home in Alton, Hampshire they collaborated on several celebrated books and produced over 30 works. The couple were jointly awarded the Coote Lake Medal in 1960. The medal is awarded by The Folklore Society "for outstanding research and scholarship".

Speaking in 2010, Iona speaks of working with her husband as being "like two of us in a very small boat and each had an oar and we were trying to row across the Atlantic." and that "[W]e would never discuss ideas verbally except very late at night."

Iona Opie died in 2017.

Reviews

[Vanessa Dargain · Rating 5 out of 5]

FUN to read .

[SBC · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a cool collection of nursery rhymes that I picked up at a book sale. I noticed someone had handwritten Japanese characters in pencil on a few pages but it was only after I got it home that I realised it was a Japanese publication (Yumi Press) and has an introduction in Japanese and notes at the back written in Japanese.

The book itself is a small paperback (designed more for adult hands than children's) with black and white illustrations throughout by Pauline Baynes. I particularly liked The House that Jack Built which has illustrations standing in for words throughout the text. (Is there a name for that style? - Google tells me it's called rebus). There is also a page of riddles and to find the answers you can fold the next page in half to see pictures that make sense of the riddles - quite unusual! There is an index of first lines at the back, before the notes in Japanese.

The copyright information calls the book an "English language textbook with Japanese annotations" so I suppose it was intended for use in classrooms, to teach English. It seems a funny way to learn English, through nonsense rhymes and archaic vocabulary! I wonder what the reasoning was and if it was successful?