THE CHILDREN OF MOTHER GOOSE
“I wonder which goose gave it to me”
“Oh, Mother Goose,” they all cried, “your goose has laid a golden egg!”
“Why, sure enough,” said Mother Goose. “That must be my Easter present. I wonder which goose gave it to me!”
Then Simple Simon waved his hand just as though he were in school, and said, “It was Jack-A-Dandy. I saw him put it in the nest!”
Specimen Page
Many a young reader longs to know more about his favorite characters in Mother Goose—more than the short rhyme about each is able to tell him. In this collection of miniature stories, he has his wish gratified. Here he gets intimate glimpses of the home and community life of many old friends: Mistress Mary, Boy Blue, Peter Piper, Curly Locks, Crosspatch, Simple Simon, Jack and Jill, Tommy Tinker, Bobby Shaftoe, and a host of others.
It appears that the Mother Goose children are a healthy, fun-loving, workaday lot of youngsters, exactly like the boys and girls who read about them. They attend Dame Trot’s school. They give tea parties and Valentine parties. They take care of the babies of the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe. They help the Crooked Man build himself a new chimney. Dr. Foster takes them walking in the woods and teaches them things about insects and spiders which every child is simply aching to know. Mother Goose herself presides delightfully over their revels.
Teachers will find these stories valuable for inculcating a love of reading in the child; first, because they are intrinsically fascinating, and second, because they quicken his mental powers by a shrewd application of some lesson in daily living.