Kirkus Reviews QR Code
MARY MIDDLING AND OTHER SILLY FOLK by Rose Fyleman

MARY MIDDLING AND OTHER SILLY FOLK

Nursery Rhymes and Nonsense Poems

by Rose Fyleman & illustrated by Katja Bandlow

Pub Date: Sept. 20th, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-38141-4
Publisher: Clarion Books

Fyleman, best known in the US for her poem “A Fairy Went A-Marketing,” was a well-known children’s writer and editor in England in the first decades of the 20th century. This volume of her original nursery rhymes includes 20 of her rhyming poems taken from a larger collection published in 1931. Included is her widely anthologized poem about mice, as well as short, humorous rhymes about farm animals and colorful characters such as Mary Middling, Lanky Lawrence, and a purple-clad witch who drinks “vinegar, blacking, and good red ink” (labeled as poison in the illustration) while she flies. Several of the rhymes have some British vocabulary (marmalade, treacle, washing peg) or rhyming pairs requiring British pronunciation that will be puzzling to children without adult interpretation. The heavily outlined illustrations have a flat, naïve style suited to old-fashioned nursery rhymes, with cobblestone streets, aproned farm girls, and tidy villages. All in all, the rhymes aren’t particularly funny or memorable—a middling sort of collection in a crowded genre. (Picture book. 2-5)