Mother Goose Remembers

I’m sure many adults turning the pages of this book to see the likes of ‘Humpty Dumpty’, ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’, ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, ‘Mary Mary’ and many more of the 46 nursery rhymes it contains will, like me, find themselves singing the words. I’m not sure whether it’s my parents or the BBC’s Listen With Mother that I have to thank more for this nostalgic pleasure. There’s nostalgia too in Beaton’s illustrations, beautifully stitched and embroidered using fabrics and felt, buttons, beads and braids bringing back memories of granny’s overflowing sewing basket and treasure box.

The reissue of this lovely book includes a new dimension in the shape of a CD. Dave Townsend’s classic folk music arrangements of the simple, memorable tunes using fiddle, flute, guitar and concertina and Northumbrian pipes are a further reminder of the oral traditional origins of these rhymes which have coloured the imagination of generations of children. One hopes this book will help to perpetuate and, in many cases, rekindle the sharing of nursery rhymes between parent and child.