Neighborhood Mother Goose Book

Nina Crews puts a new twist on original Mother Goose poetry in her book, The Neighborhood Mother Goose. This book features forty-one well-known and beloved poems such as Humpty Dumpty, Peter Piper, Ring around the Rosie and There was an Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. The poems themselves are not altered. What makes this book unique is that the illustrator matches photographs to the text. Some of the photographs are altered on a computer; such as the illustration in the poem, There Was an Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe. The photograph was augmented to show several children and their mother shrunken down in size in or playing around a shoe (their home). The illustrator brings literal meaning to the text through her photography.

I enjoyed rereading poems from my youth as this book brought a different and humorous element to them. I thought the illustrations were clever and fun. Students will enjoy comparing the traditional Mother Goose poetry with this version. In addition, they will enjoy seeing children like themselves in the pictures, which allows for text to self-connections. This book is appropriate for early elementary ages.