Four and Twenty Blackbirds: Nursery Rhymes of Yesterday Recalled for Children of Today

by Helen Dean Fish, Robert Lawson (Illustrator)

An absolute treasure filled with darling pictures. Perfect for bed-time stories all year round.

Genres: Picture Books, Poetry, Childrens, Nursery Rhymes

104 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Helen Dean Fish (1889-1953) American writer

Reviews

[Calista]

I have heard two of these nursery rhymes I believe. Most of them were new. I knew 4 and 20 blackbirds and Old Grey Goose and lastly the Little Red Hen.

My favorite rhyme I enjoyed most was RufflecumTuffle about elves going to a fairy party. If that was the story, I would give it 4 stars. I think this is difficult for children today who are exposed to modern stories and entertainment so quickly. I tried a few of these on my kids and they didn't show too much interest. Some of the better ones they did.

The art is 3 colors, Black, white, and blue. Robert Lawson of Rabbit Hill did the drawings. They are nice and it's more about the words.

There are some gruesome themes here. A family all dies, A fox eats an owlet and the father takes revenge and sends hunting dogs that kill the fox. There is a story about bugs at war, it does end in peace. Domestic violence and sticking your nose in a married couples business. So it's not all nice. There are some dark themes in the book.

I think these 30's books are very dated that I have read so far and they don't really do well today. They are best read as the Caldecott collection.

[Abigail]

An influential early twentieth-century children's book editor, Helen Dean Fish was the driving force behind the publication of the picture-book Animals of the Bible: A Picture Book , which won its illustrator, Dorothy P. Lathrop, the very first Caldecott Medal back in 1938. That same year, another of Fish's projects, this collection of twenty-four nursery rhymes, illustrated by Robert Lawson, became the very first Caldecott Honor Book. Here, in Four and Twenty Blackbirds, we have some well-known selections, from Frog Went A-Courting to The Little Red Hen, but the majority of rhymes included are more obscure, hunted down by Fish from American contributors (although their origins are clearly European), and often recorded here (according to the foreword) for the very first time. Accompanying the rhymes are Lawson's engraving-style artwork, done in black and white, with green accents.

An engaging work, particularly for those with an interest in nursery rhymes and children's poetry, this collection contained a number of songs and poems previously unknown to me, although their themes were often familiar. Joe Dobson, for instance, in which a farmer and his wife (in the days of Robin Hood) switch tasks, with the farmer keeping house and his dame tending to the fields, put me strongly in mind of the Norwegian folktale concerning The Man Who Kept House . I haven't done a great deal of reading in this area - The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes sits on my shelf as I type this, just waiting to be picked up - so I couldn't say if these selections are any more grisly than their literary descendents, but they certainly are quite gruesome, in parts! The scene, in The Tragic Tale of Hooty the Owl, in which the fox has eaten his strigine adversary's offspring, is quite bloody. I confess to a certain sadness, that the foxes here are all depicted as villains. Ah well! The artwork is appealing, although I wouldn't classify it was outstanding. It reminded me of the illustrations I've seen in some vintage Aesop collections.

All in all, an interesting work, one I would recommend to readers with a taste for older children's nursery rhymes - particularly ones not as frequently heard today - as well as to fans of Robert Lawson.

[Laura5]

Video Review here: http://liblaura5.blogspot.com/2012/01...

[Jim Erekson]

This is a very nice little collection, with Helen Dean Fish's special attention given to songs not usually featured in the Mother Goose collections. Only a few of the shorter verses are included, and quite obscure. The longer items are most often complete, multi-verse songs. A good number of these have obviously been cleaned up for modern use, with hints of older darker themes hiding in the background. But for some of them, the old themes are strong and rich like black coffee.

My favorite in the bunch is "The Robber Kitten" where although the Kitten does reform in the end, the entire bulk of the verse is spent in the imagined life of a vile highwayman. This is the same kind of moralization as in Peter Rabbit, where the sudden moralistic ending does little because so much time throughout the entire text has been spent in disobedience and difficulty.

Fish has been careful to make notes and acknowledgments for her sources for each song. This scholarship predates Iona & Peter Opie's dictionary, and follows strongly in the tradition of Alice B. Gomme's Children's Singing Games.

[Lorna]

1938 Caldecott Honor

Favorite illustration: The sweet puppy dog, with glasses reading the ABC book in the nursery rhyme called "Come Hither"

Favorite nursery rhyme: Most were unfamiliar to me, but I liked "Dame Trot and Her Comical Cat"

Kid-appeal today: I think it will really depend on the child. Many of these nursery rhymes are dark and morbid, as was the case with many traditional nursery rhymes. The language can be a bit awkward for modern readers, but my 7 year-old loved it, especially for the word play. The illustrations are by Robert Lawson of "Ferdinand" fame, so the stroke will seem familiar.

[Melissa]

Old nursery rhymes are quite violent.

[Robert Davis]

Funny how Helen Dean Fish had two Caldecott winners in the inaugural year (Honor and Medal) in which she simply collected biblical verse and nursery rhymes without any original text. It seems like she was simply riding on the coattails of superior illustrators work and taking credit for it.

I surely was not expecting to enjoy this book half as much as I did. What a delight! First and foremost, the black, white and green illustrations are absolutely fantastic. Truly superb in their detail and color scheme, the pictures are some of the finest I have seen in any Caldecott awarded book.

I like also the fact that these old nursery rhymes have not been sanitized by the Helen Dean Fisch. They retain all their macabre gruesomeness that makes them so fun. For instance, a fox has just eaten a poor little baby owl and we see the remains lying on the ground, namely a claw and feathers. Also, in another story, a bandit kitten shoots the head of a rooster off, and the accompanying illustration, which is my favorite in the book, is something that would not been seen in a modern book for children.

While the illustrations are my favorite part of the book, the rhymes themselves are fun, and in most cases new to me, although most are several hundred years old. In the forward, the author describes one rhyme written in 1855 as "not so old." In retrospect, one thing lacking that I would have appreciated, although children probably would not, is a bit of historical context to each rhyme.

My favorite illustration: The Robber Kitten shoots the Rooster.

My favorite rhyme: The Tragic Tale of Hooty the Owl.

One of the joys of reading is discovering new things one was not aware of before. Here I have discovered two things I had not been familiar with before. I have found some fun antique rhymes that are fun and deserve to be remembered. Also, I had not been aware of the talent of Robert Lawson before seeing his pictures here. I will surely look forward to seeing more in other books. They are simply splendid!

[Paul]

So now I have two favorite nursery rhyme Caldecotts - this one has a greater proportion of rhymes that I'm not familiar with. Compiler Helen Fish's forward explains the why and how of gathering the rhymes, and Lawson's illustrations are magical and amusing, with the blackbirds fluttering from page to page throughout the book. This could well be a book readers to young listeners will preview and trim. The table of contents, illustrated with one small image from the rhyme it goes with, consists of titles with some brief background or the source - many of these go back into the 1800s or were attributed to a line of grandmothers. Some of these are pretty grim or morbid, which makes their light or amusing feel more peculiar, like the ending verse of "Cluck, Cluck"...

The ducklings so easily swam all about,
Peep, peep,
The chickens said, "Surely 'tis easy to float,
Peep, peep."
So in they all went, but also, the soon found
That chicks are not ducks for the brood were all drowned.
Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep.

Sheesh! Some feel familiar like "Merry Green Fields of England" shares pieces and the rhythm of the American "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." There isn't one rhyme that stands as typical of them all, but "The Ragman" is one I'd never heard...

There was a ragman and a madman
Dwelt together in a barn,
And a peddler and a fiddler
Stole away the ragman's horn
But the ragman made the madman
Give the peddler such a bang
that the peddler made the fiddler
Give him back his horn again.

"Old Mother Tabbyskins" ends with the following verse...

I will tell the moral without any fuss:
Those who lead the young astray always suffer thus.
Very nice, very nice let our conduct be,
For all doctors are not mice; some are dogs you see!

Music for some of the rhymes is included as an appendix. Even if you don't sing them, this compilation needs to be read out loud to feel the rhyming of odd words or the unexpected juxtaposition of words.

[Amanda]

I was pleasantly surprised. This book is not exactly what it looks like. It's not about 4 & 20 blackbirds or anything else Mother Goose. Some are older than that, if you can imagine. The idea behind this book was to put together a collection of lesser-known, under-appreciated tales. The author searched and dug through many ancient tomes as well as interviewed various American families from different backgrounds whose traditions included telling these tales to their children, at bedtime usually, and through song mostly. This book is consider like a pie, with each tale (4 & 20 of them) represented as a black bird. (Keep in mind, this book was written almost a century ago.)

The meaning behind most of these "blackbirds" were easy to grasp and cleverly told. But as per most ancient stories, they would need to be modernized to keep from offending the currently weak, unimaginative, and overly sensitive American population. Some tales are slightly violent and/or misogynistic. But show me a collection of old stories, tales, myths, fables, or legends that isn't.

I do, however, recommend this book to anyone who, like me, enjoys reading old stories from cultures around the country (as in this book) or from cultures around the world.

[Rachel]

I've been trying to get a hold of this book for awhile, as it was the last book from 1938 (a Caldecott Honor) that I needed. It is a collection of nursery rhymes, which are explained in the table of contents and the introduction by the compiler Helen Dean Fish. Most of the rhymes are put to song, and the melodies are listed in the back of the book. I feel like the rhymes are either too morbid, random, or violent, but maybe that was the norm in the 18th and 19th centuries, when these rhymes were collected and/or written. Two of the most violent were "The Robber Kitten" and "The Tragic Tale of Hooty the Owl," neither of which I had heard of before. Some of the most random ones were "Old Crummles" (which I enjoyed) and "Joe Dobson," (which I didn't much like). Overall, it was an interesting collection of old and mostly new nursery rhymes, illustrated by the fabulous Robert Lawson. Recommended for ages 4-7, 2 1/2 stars.

[Ed]

Very interesting book, and the nursery rhymes get quite gruesome at times. My favorite was "And he bit off his head and sucked his blood and ate him all up, and then lay down to see what Hooty would do when he came back". I enjoyed "Rufflecumtuffle" a lot, and it is a very interesting study of how many of these nursery rhymes have evolved over the years. Many of the rhymes in this book exist today in very different forms, and are familiar, but with modifications. The artwork was fun, but nothing special.

[Katie Fitzgerald]

This book is a collection of some really great old nursery rhymes, some of which are very obvious cousins of songs we know and sing with kids today (such as Old MacDonald). One of the rhymes, "We Are All Nodding," I actually took down to possibly use at story time because it seemed like it would be fun to act out. I also loved the poem toward the end of the book that laughs at domestic disputes. Though I liked the Robert Lawson illustrations, it was the text of the rhymes that made this book a favorite for me.

[Abby]

These old nursery rhyme books are difficult to hook kids in with. My 9 year old niece and I just skimmed through it and read a few of them. She did specifically mention liking the picture of Fat Lady Dumpling.

[Debbie C]

I bought this book several years ago as part of my Caldecott collection. At the time, my children were young, and I made an effort to find this book before other winning and honor books because I thought that it would be fun to explore the nursery rhymes with my children. I recall having the same hesitations and difficulties that other reviewers have noted: I felt that some of the verses were too dated or disturbing to share with my kids, while others seemed to rely on a rhythm that I couldn't quite discern. Maybe the second issue is due more to my own lack of musical ability than to the text, but whatever the root cause, the book was not a favorite of my kids, who preferred brighter colors and a lighter themes. As a result, it just became a title to cross off my list, the book tucked neatly on the appropriate shelf.

Having recently finished my collection -- a true feat -- I decided to start at the beginning and go more carefully through each book. My kids are older, life is saner, and with an at least readable copy of each Caldecott within my grasp, I could finally relax a little. I am so glad that I did! Lawson's drawings are truly masterful. People, animals, and fairies alike have personalities and make the rhymes come alive. The rhymes themselves offer a window to the past and help you visualize the past a bit more clearly. True, the picture isn't always so pretty, but I am sure that there are many things in our world that would make people in that era cringe. In any case, whatever the book may have lacked for me as a bedtime reading option for my kids, it made up for as a piece of history and work of art.

I have a more detailed discussion of the book at https://caldecottcollector.blogspot.c...

[Cassandra Gelvin]

Rather too large to be a dainty dish.

This review originally published at http://www.drttmk.com/books/four-and-....

It's 104 pages long. It's actually got a musical score in the back of it. There's a bunch of rhymes and songs I've never even heard in here. I've heard "The Old Gray Goose", and "The Hungry Fox" looks familiar. I think I've also heard "Frog Went A-courting", but not that many verses. There's a rhyming version of "The Little Red Hen", which I've never seen before. I wonder if "Bumblebug and Bumblebee" is related to "Tweedledum and Tweedledee".

The author says in a note at the beginning that she's trying to preserve old rhymes that most people don't know, although she does intentionally include some that other people have heard like "The Old Gray Goose". And apparently "The Keys of Heaven" used to be more well-known as well. Someone like my mother-in-law, who's really into ETM (Education Through Music, which uses a lot of folk songs) would probably like this book. Most kids today would be unfamiliar with the wording for things, like "Come hither" and "Whilst they partook this dainty meal."

It's kind of interesting from a historical standpoint, but I'm really unsure whether this was ever intended for children.

Message: It's important to remember all nursery rhymes.

[10TX]

Time moves on.

Despite the authors best attempts at keeping these songs and poems alive, almost all of them are now completely forgotten in common American lore and knowledge. They are simply not relevant. The language is archaic, the daily life activities of the average person have changed so much, that it takes a life time of reading to comprehend the action in some of these poems.

Certainly, the only part of this book that is still enjoyable for children is the rhythm of some of the songs. How sad then that some of these songs have no rhythm to them that I can discern

And then I read one that is wonderfully fun to read aloud and keep pushing on to the end of this book.

The music for several of the songs is in the back of the book. I think if you learned to play them (first year piano students could), you may do better than I did finding the correct rhythm for more of the selections.

[Beverly]

What a lovely book, full of poems and jingles. Some still known today; some not very familiar. Fish writes a detailed foreword, and in the table of contents, each poem is listed with information on where Ms. Fish found it or heard it. "The Little Red Hen" as a poem was delightful. At the end of the book, she includes the music scores for 13 of the poem/songs. Robert Lawson's illustrations are a delight, with his superb draftsmanship, and some of the illustrations crammed with details. He also included blackbirds scattered throughout the pages.
Word of caution: some of these poems include violence, so parents should pre-read this book to determine whether it is suitable for their child.

[Maria Rowe]

• 1938 Caldecott Honor Book •

This was difficult for me to get through. The language is dry and the stories are often depressing. I do like that these are older nursery rhymes, and actually considered old when the book came out in 1937. I’d only heard 2 or 3 of the them. The illustrations are well done.

Materials used: unlisted
Typeface used: unlisted

[Jen]

This beats out a lot of the other books of nursery rhymes in the Caldecott lists, as the rhymes are purposefully not ones included in other collections. Robert Lawson's illustrations win for me as well. But these are kind of odd in some cases.

[Jenn]

I forgot how violent some of these classic nursery rhymes were. It is an interesting collection, with some rhymes being very familiar and others that have fallen out of style. Illustrations were okay, typical of the artist.

[MaryAnne]

Fairly simple format and illustrations. I liked the larger font, but particularly the inclusions of lesser known nursery rhymes! Makes me want to know their back story, that is, the real meaning behind them.

[Barbara Arnold]

Very old nursery rhymes with music printed in the back.

[Mckinley]

Knew a couple of these old nursery rhymes. Great illustrations.
Caldecott honor

[Crystal]

1938 Caldecott Honor

Wow! Times have certainly changed. There were a lot of not so happy endings in these nursery rhymes. And often, when they were actually happy, the rhyme was preachy.

[Brindi Michele]

1938 Caldecott Honor

[Molly]

I found it really interesting to read some nursery rhymes that are lesser known, although many were quite gruesome. I also really enjoyed the illustrations.

[Philip]

This book is amazing for three reasons: 1) beautiful pictures; 2) it helps undermine Mother Goose's hegemonic control of classic English doggerel; 3) cats with guns, more than one.

[Cathy]

The picture of Poor Lady Dumpling is the best. Most of the pictures are nothing too interesting. It is nice to read the tales and the few that have music scores in the back are fun too.

[Ann]

Interesting.

[Jessica]

This was a good mix of nursery rhymes I was familiar with and ones I didn't know. I enjoyed the verses and rhythms. I think it's fun when the music is included. The illustrations were all right.