This vintage picture book is a delightful collection of nursery rhymes illustrated by Mary Brooks and published by Ward Lock in 1969.
The illustrator – Mary Brooks
Mary A. Brooks was born in Dartford, Kent in 1922. She appears to have been the daughter of George J. Brooks and Agnes M. Smith, who were married in Dartford in 1921, and she appears to have been the eldest of ten children (all girls!).
I have been unable to locate any record of art training, so she may have been self-taught and possibly entered the industry through an apprenticeship or studio assistant position. She began illustrating children's books in the 1940s and kept her maiden name for her artwork after marrying Laurence William Penn in 1947 in Dartford. They don't appear to have had any children.
She is mostly remembered today for her illustrations of Enid Blyton books, including The Enid Blyton Holiday Annual (1951), Noddy Gets into Trouble (1954), and Noddy Meets Father Christmas (1955).
She illustrated nature scenes for Treasure magazine, and books for publishers Purnell and Dean, among others. For an excellent list of her illustrated works, see Illustration Art Gallery: Mary A Brooks.¹
It is said that she continued to paint well into her eighties. She is believed to have passed away in 2020.²
Cover, front and back matter
The front and back covers show the illustration that appears inside the collection for "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe". The cover colours are more intense and saturated than in the interior illustration.
The front cover also shows the title, "My First Reading Book of Nursery Verses", in black block text. "A Ward Lock Kingfisher Book" appears at the bottom of the front cover, "Kingfisher" in blue and a different typeface than the black block text of the rest. The back cover includes the copyright and ISBN information.
The front and back endpapers offer lovely, delicate illustrations of fairy tale, nursery rhyme, and Biblical characters on a white background.
Front endpaper – Little Red Riding Hood, one of The Three Little Pigs, Dick Whittington, Jesus in the stable, Aladdin, and a figure that is likely Jesus as the Good Shepherd
Back endpaper – Little Bo-Peep, Humpty Dumpty, Mother Goose, The Three Wise Men, Brother and Sister, Puss in Boots, and Jack and Jill
I suspect these endpapers were first used for a different collection that contained these illustrations. The back endpaper notes "Printed in The Netherlands".
The front loose endpaper is the title page, and the back loose endpaper is the final page of nursery rhymes.
The title page shows an illustration of Jill from the nursery rhyme of "Jack and Jill", sprawled at the bottom of the hill, a bucket spilling water on the ground before her, and behind her a path leading up to a well on the top of the hill. Unlike the cover picture, this rhyme doesn't actually appear in this collection. I suspect this is because this title page is a repeat from an earlier edition from 1959 – one that shows the full image, which is a double-page spread with Jack on the left.
Although not attributed as the illustrator on the cover or title page, her name is signed on the cover picture of "The Little Old Lady who Lived in a Shoe" and the title page picture of "Jack and Jill", and she is attributed as the illustrator in other collections that contain the same illustrations collected in this book.
Content
There are 23 nursery rhymes across 15 pages (unpaginated). There is no contents page or index of first lines, so I've compiled one below (see end of post).
Nursery rhymes
There were a few nursery rhymes in this collection I was either not at all or not very familiar with – namely, "Cuckoo, cherry tree", "There was a little man, and he had a little gun", "Little girl, little girl", "Little King Pippin", "Burnie bee", and "Little maid, little maid".
"Cuckoo, cherry tree" has an interesting history and variations. I enjoyed Mama Lisa's summary. In a similar vein to the famous book title rendered from the nursery rhyme that ends "One flew over the cuckoo's nest", "Cuckoo Cherry-Tree" is the title of a book. Written by Alison Uttley, its inner cover states: "The title is a country call, used to answer the cuckoo's song, or to find a hidden playfellow. It is the chant which country children sang in the fields and lanes in the author's childhood."³
"Little girl, little girl" is often a rhyme about a girl visiting the queen, aligning it with the "Pussycat, pussycat" rhyme, but in the version in this collection the little girl is visiting her grandmother "over the green".
"Little King Pippin" is the same nursery rhyme to be found by the name "King Boggen" in another collection I recently reviewed (see Mother Goose ABC, illustrated by Kinuko Craft). Both rhymes feature a king who "built a fine hall, pie-crust and pastry-crust, that was the wall." The only difference to be found is the character's name.
"Burnie bee" is a rhyme that must come from the north of England, as it's based on the local name for a ladybird,⁴ the rhyme to be said when a child throws the ladybird into the air, but I don't think our editor was aware of this, as the rhyme has been aligned with the image of a bumblebee. See Burnie Bee, Burnie Bee (Mama Lisa).
Of the familiar nursery rhymes, I enjoyed that this collection included a not-often seen third verse of "I had a little nut tree": "I skipped over water, I danced over sea, and all the birds in the air couldn't catch me." The Opies note (even lesser seen) alternative third and fourth verses.⁵
Of the four Simple Simon verses selected, the first two are the usual ones, regarding a pie, and the next two are also fairly popular, involving Simon going to look "[i]f plums grew on a thistle" and trying to catch a whale in "his mother's pail".
Some interesting differences from the common:
- The final line of "Tom, Tom, the piper's son" was "Till he ran crying down the street" (I'm more familiar with "And Tom ran crying...")
- "Mistress Mary, quite contrary" (rather than "Mary, Mary").
The rest all appears very much as usually seen.
Illustrations
Brooks' illustrations are pastel watercolours filled with rural charm and good cheer. In my copy the images are soft and a little blurry at times, likely due to printing issues in those early days of full colour picture books.
The illustrated children and adults are generally small, chubby, and rosy-cheeked, so that the occasional different image almost catches you by surprise, like this lovely illustration of the "little maid" going to milk her cow:
A few other images of note:
- "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" is a single verse, with no mention of a crow, but the crow from the missing second verse appears in the illustrations anyway, flying towards them from the other page.
- "Tom, Tom, the Piper's son" is not small and chubby but long-limbed and skinny, likely to emphasise his poverty (also reflected in his patched pants) – he is chased after by a rotund butcher wearing a blue-striped apron.
- Doctor Foster is also skinnier, his misery plain as he trudges through his puddle.
- The double-page spread of "Hey diddle diddle" is soft and beautiful, decorated with long-stemmed wild-flowers and a scattered flock of bats. The brown and white cow hovers above the hill, the fiddling cat looks blissful, the scrappy grey dog laughs, and the dish looks pleased with himself while the spoon holds a bashful hand to her mouth.
- The double-page spread of "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe" is also delightful, with joyous giggling children clambering about, so that the whipping appears harmless.
- "Simple Simon" – I think this rhyme is past its time. The word "simple" was traditionally used to refer to those with an intellectual disability, and Brooks' illustrations make that connection clear. Enough said there.
- The illustration for "Mistress Mary, quite contrary" features a copper-haired gardener in yellow and white clothing watering a garden that is a riot of wonderful colours. The garden ends in a big pink flower on which sits a bumblebee, which segues into the "Burnie bee" rhyme. In comparing this book with a predecessor (see below), it appears that the bumblebee was always part of the "Mistress Mary" rhyme, so its inclusion here must be due to editorial decision. The "Burnie bee" rhyme here also features an illustration of a farmgirl throwing grain for birds, which I can't connect in any way to the rhyme. I suspect that illustration therefore also comes from an illustration for a different rhyme in a previous collection, and that there was never any specific illustration for "Burnie bee".
Summary, availability, and reprints
It appears that My First Reading Book of Nursery Verses was first published in 1959. I found in images briefly available on Etsy that this earlier version of the book includes Jack in the title page image of "Jack and Jill", and also has additional pages and rhymes that the 1969 version lacks, including "The Grand Old Duke of York", "Cobbler, Cobbler", and "Do You Know the Muffin Man?"
Additionally, some (perhaps all) of the nursery rhymes in this 1969 collection were previously published in Bo-Peep Rhymes, published jointly by Sandle Brothers, Ltd., and Ward Lock & Co. Ltd as a "Tulip Colour Book" in 1966. That book also contained other nursery rhymes not included here.⁶
This 1969 version of My First Reading Book of Nursery Verses is identical to the first half of the Nursery Rhymes collection also published by Ward Lock in 1969. See my review of Nursery Rhymes (Ward Lock 1969).
My First Reading Book of Nursery Verses – Contents
- A red sky in the morning
- Rain, rain, go away
- Doctor Foster
- A sunshiny shower
- Cuckoo, cherry tree
- March winds
- Hey diddle diddle
- There was a crooked man
- Old Mother Hubbard
- Old mother Goose [sic]
- There was a little man, and he had a little gun
- Little girl, little girl
- Tweedledum and Tweedledee
- Little King Pippin
- Tom, Tom, the piper's son
- Little Miss Muffet
- Mistress Mary, quite contrary
- Burnie bee, burnie bee
- I had a little nut tree
- There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
- Simple Simon met a pieman
- Little maid, little maid
- Little Jack Horner
Footnotes
¹ Most of this information about Mary Brooks appears in a number of locations throughout the internet, but I believe the original source was the research of Steve at Illustration Art Gallery in 2012. Using that as a starting point, I was able to identify Brooks' birthplace as Dartford and flesh out some information about her probable family. See Mary A Brooks (Illustration Art Gallery).
² The information about painting well into her eighties is also from Illustration Art Gallery. The year of her death is from 1st Dibs, but I cannot locate any corroborating records.
³ See Cuckoo Cherry-Tree (AbeBooks).
⁴ One source describes it as a shortened form of 'burnie' (or fiery) 'beetle', but ladybirds are also known by variants of the name, including Bishy Barney Bee, and there are few agreements about the meaning of the name. For a good example, see What is the origin of Bishy Barney Bee? (English Language & Usage).
⁵ See I Had a Little Nut Tree (Wikipedia).
⁶ See Bo-Peep Rhymes (Etsy). That version shows that the bumblebee was always part of the illustration for "Mistress Mary". It also shows that the image used in My First Reading Book of Nursery Verses for "A sunshiny shower" and "Cuckoo, cherry tree" was used in Bo-Peep Rhymes to illustrate a single quite different rhyme: "Which is the bow that has no arrow? The rainbow, that never killed a sparrow. Which is the singer that hath but one song? The cuckoo, that singeth it all day long."