Sylvia Long's Mother Goose

September 1, 2002
Chronicle continues its line of successful Block Books with a set based on Sylvia Long's Mother Goose. Sylvia Long's Mother Goose Block Books contains 16 chunky board books just right for small hands to stack, knock down and read repeatedly, all packaged in an attractive box with a gift card attached to a carrying cord. Each book presents a different rhyme illustrated in Long's signature style.

Starred review from August 30, 1999
In a thoughtful opening note, Long (Liplap's Wish) explains that she saw no point in creating a new Mother Goose collection "unless I could find ways to make it unique." She fulfills her mission in various ways: she includes a number of lesser-known rhymes, and she imaginatively softens what she calls "the more frightening images." Thus in "Humpty Dumpty," the egg that cracks open when it falls off a wall hatches a duckling, and the "baby" rocking perilously in the treetop is a young bird who flies to safety as the bough breaks. Long also notes that in one case, "The Old Woman in the Shoe," she has mitigated the suggestion of violence by changing the words; here her mother is a spider who doesn't spank her brood, but rather serves them broth and bread and "kissed them all sweetly/ And put them to bed." Working in her characteristic pen-and-watercolor style, Long conjures up winsome animal characters. She carefully suggests the texture of their fur or feathers, but she also kits them out in humorous garb (the cow who jumps over the moon wears a tutu and ballet shoes; nimble Jack is a frog in a tuxedo, and he leaps from one roof to another, over a lamppost lit by a candle). She links the rhymes inventively, particularly when she devises a single illustration to encompass two rhymes. For example, the jubilant frog who recites a relatively obscure verse that celebrates "a rainy day/ In the month of May" dances atop a lily pad; sitting near him, a mouse seeks shelter under other greenery and sings, "Rain, rain, go away." A robin's-egg blue ribbon that serves as a bookmark adds extra elegance to this handsome production. All ages.

December 1, 1999
PreS-K-Human beings are replaced by animals, reptiles, and insects, all elegantly dressed, in this exuberant nursery-rhyme collection, which includes 82 familiar and less familiar verses. The artist's avowed purpose is to keep the classic phraseology but soften some of the distressing images with her interpretive pictures. For example, Humpty Dumpty becomes a clutch of duck eggs hatching as they tumble from the wall and the baby on the treetop is a fledgling ready to leave the nest. The luminous, lively, full- and double-page ink-and-watercolor illustrations are seen from a variety of perspectives, and the rhymes are arranged in many different ways on the pages. Other creative touches include a spoon-billed stork running away with the dish and Jack Spratt as a small frog and his wife as a large toad. The juxtaposition of similar themes such as "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" and "Little Boy Blue" and "Peter Piper" and "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater" adds to the fun. Even if your library's collection of nursery rhymes is already extensive, you will want to add this large and lovely volume.-Patricia Pearl Dole, formerly at First Presbyterian School, Martinsville, VA

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2000
Well-dressed mice, frogs, rabbits, dogs, and sheep fill the illustrations of this collection of familiar and some less common nursery rhymes. The roomy layout allows each ink-and-watercolor illustration to expand on the stories in the rhymes. Readers will enjoy finding pictorial connections from one page to the next and seeing the motifs that run throughout the illustrations. Ind.

(Copyright 2000 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)