Kate Greenaways Book of Poems

by Kate Greenaway

JV Poetry color ILLS 4to, Mint in Mint DJ

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Kate Greenaway (Catherine Greenaway) (1846-1901) was a children's book illustrator and writer. Her first book, Under the Window (1879), a collection of simple, perfectly idyllic verses concerning children who endlessly gathered posies, untouched by the Industrial Revolution, was a best-seller. The Kate Greenaway Medal, established in her honour in 1955, is awarded annually by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the UK to an illustrator of children's books. New techniques of photolithography enabled her delicate watercolors to be reproduced. Through the 1880s and 90s, in popularity her only rivals in the field of children's book illustration were Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, himself also the eponym of a highly-regarded prize medal. Amongst her other works are: A Day in a Child's Life (1881), Mother Goose; or, The Old Nursery Rhymes (1881), Little Ann (with Ann Taylor & Jane Taylor) (1883), Marigold Garden (1885), A Apple Pie (1886), Pied Piper of Hamelin (1888) and Kate Greenaway's Book of Games (1889).

Reviews

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do enjoy Greenaway's illustration, but these poems were...not great. There was little that was endearing or funny or charming in the poems. They were focused almost entirely on eking out "correct" behavior (that is, easy for grownups) from children through guilt. I'm not sure that I'll be keeping this one in my library. (Are its illustrations worth it to me? Because I would not read these poems to a child.)

There's a reason why we remember Greenaway as an illustrator more than as a poet:

"But do not be fretful, my darling; you know
Mamma cannot love little girls that are so."
("Little Girls Must Not Fret," 51)

Not a good model of parenting with Christian charity, forbearance, patience, gentleness, kindness, self-control....There's also judgment of "dirty" children. And a few poems that warn against vanity and uppishness (only in girls, of course) but they are not very nice in doing so.

I did find one poem to enjoy:

"The Cow" (49)
Thank you, pretty cow, that made
Pleasant milk to soak my bread,
Every day and every night,
Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white.

Do not chew the hemlock rank,
Growing on the weedy bank;
But the yellow cowslips eat;
They perhaps will make it sweet.

Where the purple violet grows,
Where the bubbling water flows,
Where the grass is fresh and fine,
Pretty cow, go there and dine.