-see the review of Opie's The Classic Fairy Tales ( )

A collection of children's rhymes, first collected in England in 1946, including things like taunts and insults, riddles, skipping rhymes, and mocking verses about schoolwork. Most of them probably aren't exactly the sort of thing you'd find in Mother Goose.

The rhymes themselves are mildly interesting, sometimes vaguely amusing, and often (from the perspective of a 21st century American) entertainingly quaint-feeling in their language. There are a few brief notes on a number of them in the back -- something I wish I'd realized while I was reading through them -- but not enough to make this feel more like a work of scholarship than a collection of amusements.

It would all be diverting for a few minutes and then pretty quickly forgettable, I think, except that this edition, from 1992, also includes some delightfully offbeat (indeed, sometimes charmingly grotesque) illustrations by Maurice Sendak. ( )

I would use this book with 3rd grade and up class visits. I would read some passages and book talk it. It was fun. ( )

This hardcover, with notes, looks scholarly - and is. However, if it were presented in a cheap mm Scholastic pb, children could also appreciate it. It's actually quite fun! ( )

Sendak's unique style brings these historical childhood rhymes to life through illustration. Peter and Iona Opie spent a lifetime studying and collecting such rhymes, and we all benefit from this carrying forward of this British oral tradition. ( )