Randolph Caldecott could take one line from a nonsensical nursery rhyme and create a story through his humorous interpretation. Consider “And the Dish ran away with the Spoon” from “Hey Diddle Diddle.”
In the first illustration you see the Dish and Spoon escaping. In the second, the Dish is charming a smitten Spoon. But, oh, ho! In the final illustration, you see the wrath of the parents Knife and Fork. The shattered Dish lies on the floor surrounded by other sorrowful dishes, and the father and mother stalk off with their naughty daughter Spoon between them.
Several illustrators have won the Caldecott Award for their nursery rhyme books, but none have extended the verses into stories like Caldecott did. Their illustrations depict scenes and characters that replicate the text, often with additional details to entertain the reader, but never quite measuring up to Caldecott himself.
In her small format 1945 Caldecott Honor book containing 77 Mother Goose rhymes, Tasha Tudor’s soft nighttime watercolor illustration of “Heigh, Diddle, Diddle,” includes all the main characters of the verse, but nothing beyond that. It’s interesting, though, that the cow isn’t actually jumping over the moon. It’s only an illusion as the moon is simply rising on the horizon.
In comparison, Marguerite de Angeli’s pencil drawings for this same rhyme show the cat, the dog, and the cow, but omit the dish and spoon. Her illustrations for this verse would certainly capture the attention of the child reader, but lack the imaginative bent of Caldecott. The oversized Book of Nursery and Mother Goose Rhymes won a Caldecott Honor in 1955 and contains 376 rhymes and over 260 illustrations, some in pencil and others in watercolor (ALSC, 2020).
With that many rhymes, de Angeli doesn’t illustrate all of them, though she does include vignettes of geese scattered on almost every page, perhaps as a nod to Mother Goose. In the illustration below, the old woman in the shoe is distributing broth, but the children, modeled after her own children and grandchildren (Kirk, 2005), look far too content to have experienced whippings before bed.
For the same rhyme, Tudor’s children also look happy, but in comparison, this old woman, the children, and the shoe are diminutive. The dandelion and chickadee provide scale and attest to their tininess.
Some of the Caldecott Award illustrators add humorous touches to their pictures. In “Rub-a-dub-dub!” Philip Reed has the candlestick maker dressed as the captain of the tub using his candlestick as a spyglass in this 1964 Caldecott Honor book Mother Goose and Nursery Rhymes. Reed not only created the colored wood engravings, but was also the typographer and printer of the book with 66 rhymes and proverbs (Kleimin, 1966). Reed was the most recent illustrator to win a Caldecott Award for a Mother Goose book.
Robert Lawson was the earliest illustrator to win a Caldecott Award for a nursery rhyme book. He won one of the two 1938 Caldecott Honors, the first year the award was given. Using black and green “pen and tempera,” Lawson illustrated 24 rather long rhymes “culled from out-of-print books…or memories of older people” (ALSC, 2020, p. 168). Helen Dean Fish collected the rhymes for Four and Twenty Blackbirds: Nursery Rhymes of Yesterday Recalled for Children Today. It wouldn’t really be classified as Mother Goose with titles like “Rufflecomtuffle,” “The Bumble Bug,” and “The Robber Kitten.” All titles are listed in the Table of Contents along with attributions and a small illustration. The Forward states,
The rhymes in this book have possibly been loved as genuinely as the shorter and more familiar Mother Goose Melodies, but because they have never had the multiple publications of Mother Goose, are not as widely known. Indeed, some of them have been in danger of being soon forgotten and lost forever.
Music is provided for several rhymes at the end of the book.
Sing Mother Goose illustrated by Marjorie Torrey is another nursery rhyme book with music. Original piano scores for 52 Mother Goose rhymes were created by Opal Wheeler in this 1946 Caldecott Honor book.
Torrey’s interpretation of “This Little Pig” is straightforward in that all the little pigs are doing exactly what the rhyme states. In five vignettes across the top of the recto, the pigs crown the main illustration of a young girl showing a little boy how to play the game that accompanies the verses.
Both Lawson and Torrey’s books incorporate music, and most of us can remember singing Mother Goose rhymes. The music helps us remember the words, and music has multiple additional benefits such as promoting bonding, physical activity, and communication skills (BBC, 2024).
Of all these nursery rhyme books, the only one to win the Caldecott Medal was The Rooster Crows by Maud and Miska Petersham in 1946. It’s a variant on Mother Goose with an early American twist in its verses and illustrations portrayed through clothing and settings. It is interesting to note that Petersham and Torrey had similar layouts for their “This Little Pig Went to Market” rhyme, and both won awards in 1946. The 82 rhymes, jingles, and finger games in the Petersham book, plus the words and music to “Yankee Doodle” are illustrated with “lithographic pencil with color separations on acetate” (ALSC, 2020, p. 161). It was revised in 1966 with new text and illustrations, and reprinted again in 1973. The music was left out of later editions.
Tasha Tudor’s 1944 Mother Goose was also reprinted in 1989. This attests to the popularity and importance of nursery rhymes. “Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes form the foundation of many children’s literary heritage” (Galda et al., 2017, p. 192). Further, Tomlinson and Lynch-Brown (1996) state, “In societies where countless allusions are made every day to the characters and situations found in nursery rhymes, knowledge of this literature is a mark of being culturally literate” (p. 76). The National Literacy Trust lists the benefits of nursery rhymes along with handy tips for using them with children. That there is a World Nursery Rhyme Week also demonstrates the value of these timeless verses.
While no nursery rhyme books have won Caldecott Awards in the last 60 years, a variety of nursery rhyme books continue to be published, some with Caldecott Award winning illustrators such as Arnold Lobel, James Marshall, and Tomie dePaola. “Illustrators have found the challenge of interpreting these familiar verses irresistible … there is a virtually limitless choice of style, quantity, and selection” (Harris, 2002, p. 329). More recent publications may be more appealing to children today and may also lack some of the stereotypes included in earlier books. With hundreds of editions, there are nursery rhyme books aplenty for every bookshelf.
Picture Books Cited
deAngeli, M. (1954). Book of nursery and Mother Goose rhymes. Doubleday.
Fish, H.D. & Lawson, R. (1937). Four and twenty blackbirds: Nursery rhymes of yesterday recalled for children of to-day. Lippincott.
Petersham, M. & Petersham, M. (1945÷1966÷1973). The rooster crows: A book of American rhymes and jingles. Macmillan.
Reed, P. (1963). Mother Goose and nursery rhymes. Atheneum.
Tudor, T. (1944÷1989). Mother Goose. Walck/Random House Books for Young People.
Wheeler, O. & Torrey, M. (1945). Sing Mother Goose. E.P. Dutton & Co.
References
Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). (2020). The Newbery and Caldecott Awards: A guide to the medal and honor books. American Library Association.
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). (2024). 10 reasons why music is great for your child (and you too). BBC Tiny Happy People.
Galda, L., Liang, L.A., Cullinan, B.E. (2017). Literature and the child. (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Harris, K. (2002). The essential guide to children’s books and their creators. (A. Silvey, Ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
Kirk, C.A. (2005). Companion to American children’s picture books. Greenwood Press.
Kleimen, D. (1966). The art of art for children’s books: A contemporary survey. Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.
National Literacy Trust. (2024). Nursery rhymes in the early years. National Literacy Trust.
Tomlinson, C. M. & Lunch-Brown, C. (1996). Essentials of children’s literature. Allyn and Bacon.
World Nursery Rhyme Week. (2024). World nursery rhyme week.
Fun reading your article about Mother Goose books and the different ways that the artists have depicted various scenes. I just purchased The Jessie Wilcox Smith Mother Goose at an antiques barn, published by Random House in 1986 (although Smith died in 1935). This book doesn’t include any pictures of the dish running away with the spoon, so I don’t know how Smith interpreted that particular rhyme. Her illustrations all depict quite realistic images of children rather than fanciful interpretations.
Jessie Wilcox Smith’s illustrations are always heartfelt.