What Rhymes with Food?

Here at the second helping house we don't fight over pie.

My wife and I have been searching for an illustration of the “dish running away with the spoon”, depicted in the Mother Goose rhyme “The cat and the fiddle”. We have an anthropomorphic gallery as part of this blog, and would like to include this image. My search lead to my mothers collection of children's books, many saved from my childhood, she uses them as a soure of inspiration for her own art work. Still sharp at 83 she pulled her favourite “Mother Goose” from the book case. It was the one I remembered but not with the illustration that I imagined. Paging my way through the volume I was struck by the number of rhymes that made mention of food. The illustrations flooded my mind as I remembered them from long ago. This moment of impact –the collision of childhood memory and my current re-examination of this book led me to an immediate conclusion. It would be a great shame not share and enlighten everyone to this forgotten illustrator. His name is “Tenggren” and the illustrations are from “The Tenggren Mother Goose”. This book is out of print but he also illustrated many of the children's “Little Golden Book” series. A search at abebooks will turn up many of Tenggren illustrated works. In my research I discovered May the first is mother goose day, a day to read and remember our mother of rhyme.

If you grew up as lucky as I did with a mom who bought books for you and read them outloud as you studied the pictures you may have a spot in your heart for “Mother Goose.”


Related Tags: mother goose, tenggren, jack sprat, punch and judy, this little piggie who went to market, five toes