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Original Mother Goose Review


Original Mother Goose  Manufacturer: Running Press Kids
Author(s): Blanche Fisher Wright

ISBN: 1561381136    EAN: 9781561381135
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 136
Reading Level: Ages 4-8

Average Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Retail Price: $17.95
Online Sale Price: $12.21
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A glorious, full-color collection of Mother Goose rhymes, featuring the classic Blanche Fisher Wright illustrations. Favorite nursery rhymes fill the pages of this deluxe volume, complete with a real cloth binding and beautiful tipped-on cover art.



User Submitted Original Mother Goose Reviews


February 18, 2006
Illustrations are not very vivid or saturated.
This is a lovely volume at a very attractive price. However, I was disappointed that the illustrations were not as good as I remember. Perhaps in childhood I had a different edition. The colors look somewhat washed out and, while there are many rhymes, there are not many full page illustrations.

I probably had an edition with a much smaller number of the more interesting rhymes with each one illustrated by a very colorful picture. If I had known this volume was not of that type I would not have purchased it.

I have seen photographs of the other available volume, titled, "The Real Mother Goose", and the colors seem to be more vivid. I wish I had known that before.

It is all a matter of taste, of course.

November 3, 2005
Sublime and significant
This is an extremely lavishly illustrated book, with excellent typography, detailed lithograph quality period illustrations, excellent color separation, and wonderful line detail. Many pages of this book are suitable for framing.

The binding is of a quality rarely seen today. This is a work to endure in libraries for generations to come. And this is important.

This edition's careful preparation speaks of the timelessness and endurance of these rhymes and the influence they have had on the English language and the shaping of our collective consciousness in the Anglophone West. In Mother Goose morals manners and conventions are all set to rhyme. For America emerging from a rural British colonial economy into an author of her own destiny is reflected in this world: class division, economic opportunity, luck, affinity with but dominion over animals and nature, and above all, choices. But whysoever could these concepts and these words, presented this way, be important in our day and age? one may ask.

The answer, of course, is as simple as the rhymes themselves, for each illustrates a point of life that ultimately informs dimensions of English Common Law, of which we are all now subject as citizens. Indeed, you'd be hard pressed not to find a single word in this work that is not in "Black's Law Dictionary."

This original Mother Goose edition, coupled with reading aloud to children Shakespeare and the King James Bible prepares them for a mastery of English letters and concepts, and therefore a mastery of life in these United States and even the world, as few other cultural objects could.

Give your children the foundation for the future, and read them The Original Mother Goose, for it captures a voice we seldom hear in this day and age, and prepares them like few other offerings in life of making sense of our language and giving them power latter.

June 28, 2004
The Beautiful, Always Classic "Mother Goose"!
I recently purchased this book for my new granddaughter and myself. It is beautifully bound in royal purple cloth with gorgeous endpapers and original front page illustrations by Milo Warner. The illustrations throught the book, however, are Blanche Fisher Wright's and they are just as beautiful as the original 1916 ones.

This book contains classics like" Pat-A-Cake, See-Saw, Little Bo-Peep, Little Boy Blue, Humpty Dumpty, Ring Around The Rosy and countless others.

If you would like to share the Original Mother Goose with a child of the next generation or just read it yourself to reminisce your OWN childhood, this is the book for you!

Happy Rhyming and Reading!

October 13, 2003
The Original Mother Goose
What would the preschool years be without "Hey Diddle Diddle," "Mary had a Little Lamb," and "Humpty Dumpty"? Mother Goose nursery rhymes are part of our cultural heritage. The beautiful, colorplate illustrations in this original, oversized volume will make many of these rhymes especially memorable. Unfortunately, the rhymes are densely packed, with several on each page, and thus the majority do not have accompanying illustrations.

February 25, 2003
The Original is Still the Best
Save us from historical revisionists like Ms. Takahashi, who clearly has no idea of the origins of the Mother Goose nursery rhymes or the harsh conditions that existed in England when the rhymes developed. Social class division, beating, and animal cruelty were facts of life. Certainly the subject matter can be a little grisly, but infants don't care -- they love the sing-song quality of the verses. Older children can find in the rhymes a painless introduction to history and a springboard for discussions about why we do things differently today. My grandmother used this book with my mother as an infant in 1922 and used it again with me as an infant in 1957. It is still just as good with our infant daughter today. Mother Goose has become a part of our cultural history. "Updating" the text to reflect modern mores smacks of the kind of historical revisionism carried out by Orwell's Ministry of Truth in "1984."

January 8, 2002
Frighteningly outdated
The illustrations are wonderful, but they are they only thing I like about this book. The poems too often have subject matter of social class division, whipping or beating "bad" children or adults, and animal cruelty. In addition to this, the layout and typography of this edition are terrible! It is actually difficult to read the text, not a good thing in a book meant to be read aloud. I understand that this edition is based on the 1916 version, but on reading these "original" versions of the poems, in their "original" layout, I am convinced that there is good reason to update this material. I would love to see the beautiful illustrations pared with updated text (and typography!). This version may have value as an historical record of how much society has changed, but there is no place for it on my daughter's bookshelf.

December 17, 2001
mother goose
it is a good book and it is an old clasic told 100's of years in the makingi recomend it for your children

July 31, 2000
THE Original
This book, recognizable with it's checkerboard background in earlier editions, is engaging as a read-aloud book for children far younger than the reccommended 4-8 years. Handy for pre-bedtime use because most poems are short and you can choose to read as many or as few as you have time for. Introduce your child to rhyme and fancy with this must-have staple. (My mom read it to me when I was little, too!)


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