Mother Goose is one of everyone's childhood favorite nursery rhymes. In this book you don't just get the ideal nursery rhymes but you also get vivid and vibrant photos to go along with the book as well. Mother Goose is a beautifully illustrated traditional and modern verse with musical notation. It would be an innovative interpretation for younger children. ( )

The cover of Blanche Fisher Wright’s edition of The Original Mother Goose claims to be “based on the 1916 classic,” but gives no other explanation for how the “original” Mother Goose rhymes have been changed or adapted for this newer publication. This edition of the Mother Goose nursery rhymes seems to be intended more as a collector’s item for nostalgic parents than as an accessible storybook for children: there seems to be (pardon the pun) no rhyme or reason for the organization of the “Rimes” in this edition, and the illustrations look like mock-vintage drawings from Victorian England. Even the illustrations of anthropomorphic animals (like the ones for “Ducks and Drakes” and “Little Jenny Wren”) feature “realistic” animals in fantastic clothing, awkwardly trying to bridge the gap between “kid-friendly” and “respectable” artwork. Additionally, like Wright’s art, the font looks like old-fashioned woodblock printing, suggesting an antiquity that may not appeal to children. Frustratingly, the “table of contents” also serves no purpose: the rhymes have no page numbers listed on the index, and anyone looking for a specific nursery rhyme will have to blindly flip through pages to find it. This may be an accurate recreation of “the original Mother Goose,” but an update (in this case) might have been more effective than fidelity to the source material.

Citation:
Wright, Blanche Fisher. The Original Mother Goose. Philadelphia: Running, 1992. Print. ( )