Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes illustrated by Kate Greenaway

This is an enchanting, stitched,  little hardback published by Chancellor Press. The late eighteenth century style illustrations by Kate Greenaway do justice to these traditional nursery rhymes. Greenaways paintings were reproduced by chromoxlography, a process which was popular from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth century, by which colours were printed from hand-engraved wood blocks. This is a beautiful facsimile of the original 1881 edition filled with over forty famous nursery rhymes. It is a welcome edition to our poetry section in the Little Library of Rescued Books in our classroom.

The contents page  and one of the first rhyme of the book

The Best Primary Poetry Anthology Ever selected by Lesley Pyott

It seems I have had this poetry wonder forever...well since my third year teaching in 1986. I have used it countless times to inspire children to poetry and it covers many topics, some being: Ghosts, The Circus, Trains, Animals, Cats, Dogs, People, The Beach, just to mention a few of the chapters in this book. Not only does it have a wide variety and forms of poetry, but it also includes some helpful suggestions to get students writing. This book now joins the poetry section in our Little Library of Rescued Books. It contains my favourite poem ever by Alfred Lord Tennyson:

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Our Village by John Yeoman and Quentin Blake

John Yeoman and Quentin Blake have created an entire village, filled with interesting, eccentric and endearing characters. It is essentially a book of descriptive poems describing each of the main characters in this village. There is Mr Crumb the Baker, Mr Pruce the Postman, Mr Henry Arkwright who loves his penny-farthing bike, Little Miss Thynne the school teacher, two elderly citizens...Lily Bins and Elsie Crumb and many others.

The use of rhyme keeps the readers walk through the village lively and anticipating the next character. Farmer Trotter is quite memorable:

Old Father Trotter has five pigs,

All fat and pink and white;

He scratches at their backs until

They're grunting with delight.

Quentin Blake is one of my favourite illustrators whose quirky and comical drawings I came to know well though his illustration of Roald Dahl's books. He also illustrates for more recent author, David Walliam's. The maps provided of the village on the end covers of the book make for useful reference points.