**This is IT -- the nursery rhyme book I've been hoping for, with all the rhymes the most demanding addict could ask for --...

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BOOK OF NURSERY AND MOTHER GOOSE RHYMES

**This is IT -- the nursery rhyme book I've been hoping for, with all the rhymes the most demanding addict could ask for -- and with pictures that are sheer delight. Some will dub them old-fashioned, but I make no bones of my insistence that illustrations for nursery rhymes should be nostalgic, full of period flavor, enlarging to the imagination, widening the association horizons, and decorative. These illustrations qualify on all counts - and more. There's lots of ""doing"" -- items for identification by small listeners and lookers, action where action is demanded, enchanting backgrounds that give a period and regional flavor (where else would you find Banbury Cross as it actually was?), costumes that belong with the rhymes. This is a book that will help today's and tomorrow's small fry build their mental associations that in later years mean so much. That Mrs. De Angeli has very definite concepts of her own, not always in accordance with one's own, serves - in this case - to pique curiosity and interest, for always there's validity to her ideas -- and charm in likes as well as differences. The book will be sturdily cloth bound, a big book that will open flat to well designed pages, abounding in pictures,- 32 in full color (of which 16 are full pages, the rest spots), 10 full pages in black and white (enchanting, even without color), and over 200 line spots, scattered through the text. The choice of inclusions represents collaboration some 350 odd rhymes, old favorites in authentic versions, and numerous others less familiar but that meet the acid test on ear and sense appeal, quality of rhythm and word patterns. Mrs. De Angeli has given of her best, which is high praise.

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1954

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