This nursery rhyme collection, copyrighted by World Distributors (Manchester) Limited (and published with the "World & Whitman" logo) was part of a 4 book nursery rhyme series published in 1980. The other books of the Rhymetime series were:
Animal Nursery Rhymes – see my review of Animal Nursery Rhymes
Round the World Nursery Rhymes
Nursery Rhymes from Lullaby Land
I'm not 100% sure as yet, but based on their appearance in World's 1973 My Nursery Rhyme Book collection, and Google Books entries I was able to find for three of the series, it seems that the Rhymetimes collection may have been previously published by World as part of the Emerald Book series. Also see my review of My Nursery Rhyme Book (World Distributors, 1973).
Nursery Rhymes for Boys & Girls is a red-orange hardcover book featuring the Rhymetime logo and World & Whitman logo. The front cover features a ragamuffin boy dressed in period clothing and carrying a dog, a toy soldier riding a horse, a wren and a robin beside pink flowers, and a walking girl dressed in period clothing and carrying an umbrella. The back cover features a kneeling girl in period clothing, sewing. Some of these figures appear in the book itself (yet are different – more to follow below), so the cover illustrator is likely different from the illustrator of the interior pictures. The endpapers (front and back) are a bright pink, featuring only the white silhouette of the Rhymetime logo.
There is no table of contents or index for the 16 pages of nursery rhymes in this Nursery Rhymes for Girls & Boys collection, but each rhyme has a title so I've collated them here by the titles given in the book.
I was a little dubious about the title of this book, wondering what it meant by 'nursery rhymes for boys and girls', but I soon realised it just means that the rhymes focus on boy and girl characters – there is no division of the nursery rhymes into what might appeal to each gender. There were a few rhymes I was unfamiliar with, and I hadn't realised there was a third verse to Jack and Jill, where Jill gets whipped by their mother "for laughing at Jack's disaster".
Unfortunately, there is no illustrator attributed, but if we can trust that the Google Book entry I located for an earlier Nursery Rhymes for Boys & Girls (published by World Distributors in 1973 as 'an Emerald Book') is an earlier version of this book, then the illustrator (as attributed for that collection) is Sue Aspey, and the editor is Hilda Young.
I enjoyed the vintage illustrations. Most of the illustrations are on a white background, but we have some double page spreads with background colours – comparatively blue, pink, and yellow. I particularly liked the finely drawn robin and dormouse drawn to illustrate 'The North Wind', the illustration of Jenny Wren and her groom, and the serious dancing lion featured as Old King Cole. The people are fairly flat, with reddened cheeks, but carry some character, as with the Knave of Hearts careful not to drop his prize (or possibly blowing on the hot tarts?), and the girl and faun meeting in "Summer Breeze". There is also something delightful about this mysterious long-bodied cat, hanging around the children with the Muffin Man.
If this is a reprint, as seems likely, there may be some differences from the original, as some of the illustrations don't seem a logical fit for the rhymes, the most obvious being the rhyme of 'Incy Wincy Spider', which seems to be accompanied by an image designed for 'Little Miss Muffet' (pictured below). There is also an apparent mismatch for the rhyme 'The Merchant Man', which appears alongside an image depicting the duck captain and sailor mice of 'I Saw a Ship A-Sailing', for 'Cherry stones' (which appears to feature Little Jack Horner), and for the rhymes 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' and 'Little Maiden', which sit alongside what appears to be an illustration for 'Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary'.
An illustration for 'Incy Wincy Spider' which appears better suited to 'Little Miss Muffet' (with the robin from 'The North Wind' in the foreground)
I also wondered about the images for 'Tommy Trot' (which is incongruously accompanied by an illustration of a sitting boy holding an egg or ball) and 'Four-and-Twenty-Tailors' (which does feature a snail, but no tailors, only a fairy with wings, hanging from a mushroom), but if they are a mismatch, I wasn't sure what rhymes they were meant to be illustrating. However, the other illustrations are all fairly literal in how they match their rhymes, so it got me wondering.
In terms of the artistic differences between the cover and interior illustrations, compare these images from inside the collection to the same (but different) images that appear on the cover. Other than a toy soldier riding a toy horse, the rest of the images on the cover appear to be original, rather than (near) copies from the interior of the book.
As with Animal Nursery Rhymes, this collection of nursery rhymes appears to be rare – I was unable to find anything at all about it online, and no copies for sale. However, it's a lovely collection and worth a look if you can get your hands on it.
- The Queen of Hearts
Old King Cole
Who Comes Here?
Cherry Stones
Molly, My Sister and I
To Market
Jack Sprat
Jack and Jill
Georgie Porgie
Skipper, Skipper
The Cuckoo
Pancake Day
Jenny Wren Last Week was Wed
The Merchant Man
Queen of May
Rub-a-Dub-Dub
I had a Little Castle
Summer Breeze
Butterfly, Butterfly
St. Swithin's Day
One Misty Moisty Morning
Harvest Home
Roast Chestnuts
Come Hither, Sweet Robin
The Muffin Man
Incy Wincy Spider
The North Wind
Little Tommy Tittlemouse
Little Dame Crump
Little Girl, Little Girl
Little Betty Blue
Little Jack-a-Nory
Tommy Trot
What are Little Girls Made Of?
Little Maiden
The Daughter of a Farrier
The Coachman
Four-and-Twenty Tailors
Bessie Bell and Mary Gray
On Saturday Night
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