Michael Foreman's Mother Goose

by Michael Foreman

A delightful little book with the nursery rhymes of old. The book also has great little illustrations.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published June 27, 1991

About the author

Michael has worked on magazines, book jackets, animated films, TV adverts, and even for the police, sketching criminals described by witnesses. As well as illustrating many of his own books, Michael has illustrated over a hundred books for authors such as Shakespeare, J. M. Barrie, the Brothers Grimm, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. Michael has travelled widely - to Africa, Japan, the Arctic Circle, China and Malaysia, the Himalayas, Siberia and New Zealand - to research his books. "I do a lot of research when I'm travelling - I find it thrilling to discover the particular 'art' of different landscapes and work them into a book. But I find I have to travel by myself, otherwise I'm constantly getting involved in other people's impressions of a place... I try to be invisible when I'm travelling, so I tend to listen in on conversations rather than participate in them - I just want to look and draw."

Reviews

[Terry Marzell]

Foreman, Michael. Michael Foreman’s Mother Goose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company. 1991. Target Audience: Ages 2-6. Reading Level: 2.8. This volume has not won any awards, but the author has earned the Kate Greenaway Medal, the Bologna Graphics Prize, and two Francis Williams Prizes for other works. This book contains more than 200 timeless Mother Goose rhymes, lullabies, nonsense verses, riddles, and tongue twisters. Most of them are not familiar to me, and in some instances, even the familiar rhymes are presented in versions slightly different from those I’d heard as a child. “Ring Around the Rosie,” for example, is presented as “Ring-a-Ring 0’Roses,” where “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down” becomes “A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down.” In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” the phrase “four calling birds” is replaced with “four colly birds.” These alternate versions probably reflect a British form of the text, as the author is from England. On the plus side, I enjoyed reading both the English and the Scottish version of “There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.” As for illustrations, the material is presented thematically in two-page spreads, portrayed in lovely pastel watercolor drawings. Many of the images in the spreads are linked to the spread that follows. I found the illustrations that accompanied “London Bridge,” “Oranges and Lemons,” and “The Key of the Kingdom” especially charming. As for content, I think that we sometimes miss how violent some of these seemingly innocent rhymes can be. In "Three Blind Mice," the farmer's wife cut off their tails with a carving knife. In “Fe, Fi Fo Fum,” the imagery of "Be he alive, or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread." For little children? Really? Tag: CSULB Class 2 Mother Goose Picturebook.

[Michael Earp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic collection of nursery rhymes. There are so many, and only a handful made me cringe from contemporary standards. (Often collections like this every second one is not something you'd really want to be reading aloud these days).