Little Boy Blue, Go Blow Your Horn

Everyone has a book of nursery rhymes. Pat-a-cake, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Jack and Jill. You can recite most of them. Jack Sprat Could Eat No Fat, See Saw Margery Daw, Little Miss Muffett. No need for a book. Yes? No. You haven’t seen this book.

POCKETFUL OF POSIES: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Salley Mavor, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010

If this book hadn’t won a Golden Kite, awarded by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, I wouldn’t have known about it. Now that I do know, I plan to buy several for gift giving as well as one for myself.

Salley Mavor is an artist with a needle, fabric, and when needed, buttons, beads, and outdoor discoveries of acorns, driftwood, stones and shells. She collected these nursery rhymes and then set about illustrating them--intricately. One of my writer friends said every page could be an “I spy game.” Indeed, every page of this amazing book is a work of art.

The artist is the daughter of an artist. She recalls having art supplies which included not only crayons and paper but time to create and one would also think the support of both parents since she dedicated this book to the memory of “my remarkable parents, Mary and Jim Mavor.” Her unique artistic gifts and talents were further encouraged at the Rhode Island School of Design.

The jacket cover boasts, “This will be a book to be pored over again and again and passed down from generation to generation.”

I agree.