This vintage picture book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes was illustrated by Kinuko Craft and published by Platt & Munk in 1977.
Cover, front and back matter
The front cover presents, inside a red frame, Mother Goose riding a large goose. A small child in '70s clothing sits before her, and the goose has reins and wears a chequered vest. Behind the goose, a double ribbon pulls a collection of individual children, each in a box sporting a letter of the alphabet. They are flying through a cloudy blue sky above an ocean.
The title appears in a scroll, Mother Goose in navy blue and A B C in solid red. The front cover also announces the book to be "A Cricket Book" (a fact that doesn't appear anywhere inside the book). Of interest, while Mother Goose appears on a domesticated white goose on the front cover, she appears on a Canada goose in the illustration in the book (the nursery rhyme for the letter "O").
The spine joining them is orange, but the back cover presents the same red frame, this time containing an image of a distant Mother Goose flying towards the moon, leading behind her the children in alphabet boxes, each child now holding a Chinese lantern to light their way, as the sky is darker. Beneath the moon is a ghostly oriental palace above a sprawling landscape.
The front endpapers present large blooming flowers in the Art Nouveau style. Alphabet letters are scattered around like falling blossoms. On the inside cover the central image appears inside a circular frame, featuring two children reading a book and waving through a window at several animal characters dressed in historical (perhaps Regency or Victorian era) clothing. Publication information appears below. The loose endpaper is the title page, with an illustration of the same children and animals gathered at the feet of Mother Goose. She wears a billowing Victorian skirt, in rich stripes of blue and red (bordered by gold), a navy jacket, and a tall conical black hat atop a white ruffled bonnet, tied beneath her chin with a large purple bow.
The back endpapers feature the final nursery rhyme of the collection on the loose endpaper and a repeat of the circular frame image and blooming flowers on the back inside cover, with the same alphabet letters scattered about like falling blossoms. Inside this circular frame is an image of the same children, now peacefully sleeping.
Contents
There are 26 nursery rhymes illustrated across 19 pages (unpaginated). There is no contents page or index of first lines, so I've compiled one below (see end of post).
A striking glitch in the book occurs on the first page, for the letter A – the text is the nursery rhyme "A diller, a dollar", but the image is clearly illustrating the nursery rhyme "As I was going to St. Ives". I can only imagine that "As I was going to St. Ives" was the selection for the letter A communicated to the illustrator, and some editing error resulted in the change. It was a surprising and unfortunate opening to the book.
Nursery rhymes
There were many well-known nursery rhymes in this collection, as well as several I didn't know at all – namely "Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess", "King Boggen", "Upstairs, downstairs, upon my lady's window", and "Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn".
I enjoyed how "Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess" is a kind of riddle, as all those names are forms of one name, explaining how they found 5 eggs and "all took one, but left four in".
"Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn", while originating in English counting rhymes, is more heavily published in American collections, which perhaps explains my lack of familiarity with it. It usually ends with the line "one flew over the cuckoo's nest", a saying I am familiar with! Here, however, the ending is "one flew over the goose's nest", a variant I can't find a record of anywhere else. "King Boggen" also appears to be mostly published in American collections.
"Upstairs, downstairs, upon my lady's window" is a rhyme I can't find out much about, although it shares obvious connections with "Goosey Goosey Gander".
Of the familiar nursery rhymes, all seemed much as they usually appear, except for "Rub-a-dub-dub", which had an unusual final line – "They've all gone off on a spree". I much prefer that ending to the more traditional "Turn them out, knaves all three", or the nonsensical "They all jumped out of a rotten potato". Other slight variations appeared in:
- "Pussycat, pussycat" where the pussycat went to London to "look at" (rather than "visit") the Queen and frightened a mouse under "the" (rather than "her") chair
- "Little Bo Peep" where she "can't tell" (rather than "doesn't know") where to find her sheep
- "A diller, a dollar", which says "what made you" (rather than "what makes you")
- "Curly Locks", which says "will you" rather than "wilt thou" and drops the "yet" in the swine line.
There are several rhymes that usually start with "The", here elided for the sake of our alphabet collection (namely "Queen of Hearts" and "North Wild doth blow").
Of note, sometimes it is a mouse that has married the bumblebee, but here it is the equally as often-seen fly.
Illustrations
- "Mary, Mary, quite contrary", which features a dark-haired girl carrying an armful of vegetables, at her back two rows of very pretty seated maidens dressed in flowing robes, with flowing hair tied with flowing ribbons
- a mother mermaid holding up her child to wave at the passing ship in "I saw a ship a-sailing"
- a mother and her child watching geese passing overhead in "Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn"
- pleasant watercolour illustrations of Little Bo Peep sitting atop a hill and of the Knave of Hearts racing away with his tarts.
- four little sprites or pixies running off with a blue egg in "Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess"
- Georgie Porgie depicted as a cat kissing bunny, puppy, and squirrel girls
- a striking image of England's Queen Elizabeth I in "Pussycat, pussycat" alongside a funny little mouse (that also wears a ruff), gaping in dismay as it sees the oncoming cat
- two moonlit figures riding a seesaw balanced on the moon, surrounded by transparent fairies in "Seesaw, Margery Daw"
- a maiden dressed in daffodil attire for "Daffy-Down-Dilly", dancing with child-sized fairies
- a wooden toy filling the role of the "little boy in the cream pot up to his neck" in "Upstairs, downstairs, upon my lady's window"
- the three men in a tub looking very jolly as they feast on their "spree", three happy fish alongside them, with a fourth eating one of their sausages!
- a rat tumbling out of an alphabet biscuit tin in "X, Y, and tumbledown Z", while a cat clothed in 1950s dress, wearing a head kerchief reaches for something in the pantry.
Summary and availability
This is a pleasant selection of nursery rhymes, arranged alphabetically by their first lines, with lovely watercolour illustrations by Kinuko Craft, heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau style.
There appear to be numerous secondhand copies of this vintage nursery rhyme collection available online.
Mother Goose ABC – Contents
The nursery rhymes appear alphabetically, as indicated here by their first lines:
- A diller, a dollar
- Baa, baa, black sheep
- Curly Locks, Curly Locks
- Daffy-Down-Dilly
- Elizabeth, Elspeth, Betsy, and Bess
- Fiddle-de-dee, fiddle-de-dee
- Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie
- Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
- I saw a ship a-sailing
- Jack Sprat could eat no fat
- King Boggen, he built a fine new hall
- Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
- Mary, Mary, quite contrary
- North Wind doth blow
- Old Mother Goose when
- Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
- Queen of Hearts
- Rub-a-dub-dub
- Seesaw, Margery Daw
- There was a crooked man
- Upstairs, downstairs, upon my lady's window
- Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn
- Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town
- X, Y, and tumbledown Z