The Oxford Nursery Treasury

There is much here to charm and delight young readers and listeners in this latest in a series of anthologies for younger children selected and illustrated by Beck. A selection of rhymes and verses, some very familiar, but a few less well-known, is interspersed with five familiar-tales: 'The Princess and the Pea', 'The Tortoise and the Hare', 'The Porridge Pot', 'Chicken Licken' and 'Lazy Jack'. The retellings are rhythmic and gentle and real aloud well. A difficulty in illustrating material as familiar as much of this is to make it appropriate for present-day readers while maintaining a sense of the timelessness of the content. Too often books of traditional tales and rhymes have a stereotypical and unimaginative appearance. Beck, however, succeeds admirably in his task. His watercolours are vibrant yet delicate. Gentle cross-hatching gives a period feel to many of the illustrations, as in the picture of Ragamuffin and her mother who face starvation before they acquire the magic porridge pot, yet the mother and daughter both have a modern air, bringing the story closer to the young reader. My only caveat about this collection is that by the time a child is old enough to listen to the stories he or she may already know many of the nursery rhymes. But the blurb's statement that there is something for everyone to enjoy may better indicate the intended audience: it would be a good collection to give to a young family or an infant or pre-school teacher to have to hand.