Books with title Tales of Mother Goose

Children growing up in a world that values multiculturalism need a Mother Goose that reflects what they see around them. This unique new edition does just that by keeping the Mother Goose storytelling tradition while simultaneously reaching into new cultures to add flavorful new rhymes and stories. Here you'll find the sing-song favorites of Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffett and Yankee Doodle. In addition to bringing ethnic treats to the literary feast, The World of Mother Goose presents traditional and modern tales, each with a distinctive illustration style to perfectly suit its genre. Mother Goose will never go out of style and this lively spicy edition guarantees it will stay relevant to a modern audience for decades to come.

The Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault, includes illustrations by Gustave Doré. Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a member of the Académie Française and a leading intellectual of his time. Ironically, his dialogue Parallèles des anciens et des modernes (Parallels between the Ancients and the Moderns), 1688-1697, which compared the authors of antiquity unfavorably to modern writers, served as a forerunner for the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, an era that was not always receptive to tales of magic and fantasy. Perrault could have not predicted that his reputation for future generations would rest almost entirely on a slender book published in 1697 containing eight simple stories with the unassuming title: Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals, with the added title in the frontispiece, Tales of Mother Goose. Charles Perrault, in a symbolically significant gesture, did not publish the book in question under his own name but rather under the name of his son Pierre. Perrault chose his stories well, and he recorded them with wit and style. His narratives belong to a story-telling tradition that has been shared by countless generations. He did not invent these tales -- even in his day their plots were well known -- but he gave them literary legitimacy.

Pat-a-Cake,” “Simple Simon,” “Rock-a-bye, Baby:” these and the many other rhymes that make up Mother Goose have become almost as much a staple of child-rearing as the rattle and the bottle. Little ones love its mix of lullabies and limericks, humor and sing-song verse, and they learn from it too. Gyo Fujikawa brought her inimitable style to this version, which features a mix of enchanting line drawings and warm color pictures. Adorable mice, led by a duck in uniform, man the boat in “I Saw a Ship a-Sailing.” A multicultural group of children circle round “The Mulberry Bush.” And “The Three Kittens” have never been cuter. Fujikawa has succeeded in creating a truly magical world for kids to enter.