Mother Goose Book

Sylvia Long's collection of Mother Goose is a medium sized, heavy book. All the familiar characters, Miss Muffet, Humpty, and Little Bo Peep, are animals drawn in a delicate style with fine details, rich colors, and paint-like soft textures. The illustrations, while bolder that Beatrix Potter, evoke that cozy, safe, old fashioned style. Animal lovers will enjoy seeing their favorites dressed like human clothes. Most pages have small white borders, but Long sometimes uses the whole page or a themed border. For example, in the sixpence passage, the king is a lion bursting outside of the border of coins (sixpence). This lends some interest to this dense book, that I imagine would be flipped through or read in little bursts. It is too long for a single reading or story time for preschoolers. Early elementary children can analyze the rhyming, vocabulary and many details in the illustrations. The illustrations help to convey the context of some of the old fashioned language and situations, creating meaning. For example, readers can connect the pastries in the border to donuts in the bakery case and understand that hot cross buns are a sweet treat. The language can be confusing for little ones and require some explanation.