Marguerite De Angeli's Book of Nursery & Mother Goose Rhymes

Book of Nursery & Mother Goose Rhymes is a traditional children's book filled with classic poems, fairy tales and rhymes that has been enjoyed by all ages for decades. This Mother Goose title weaves in delicate pencil illustrations, done in both black and white and color, with familiar nursery rhymes that utilize many literary devices such as repetition, alliteration, metaphors, symbolism, rhyming, free-verse and other forms of poetry. Poems such as "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Pepper" are included.

This book certainly struck a nostalgic string as I read through the pages, many of the poems were familiar to me but there were quite a few that were new. It is a great product of children's literature, and I love how it can be read by children of all ages. I think books like these that aren't written as a novel but instead are a collection of individual works are very versatile in the classroom. For example, in younger grades it can be used by the students to find examples of rhyming words and put them on a word wall. For middle aged students it can be used to analyze different literary or poetic elements like onomatopoeia, metaphors and similes, and alliteration. For older students, they can dissect a particular style of poetry or storytelling and transform it into something else; if the story is a riddle they can try to write their own, if the poem is happy and positive maybe they can use higher-level vocabulary to turn change the mood of the poem.

De Angeli, M. (1954). Book of nursery & mother goose rhymes. Chicago, IL: F.E. Compton Co.