Walter Jerrold

"Doctor Foster went to Glo'ster, In a shower of rain; He stepped in a puddle right up to his middle, And never went there again." A bumper crop of nursery rhymes for the delight of the very young. In his Introduction, Jerrold explains how his selection was based on earlier collections made by John Newbery, Joseph Ritson and James Orchard Halliwell. He goes on to add, " Students divide our rhymes into narrative pieces, historical folk-lore, game rhymes, counting-out rhymes, jingles, fragments, etcetera, but for the children for whom and by whom they are remembered, and for whom they are here collected and pictured anew, they are just -- Nursery Rhymes."

Every child's bookshelf should start with a collection of nursery rhymes so that these fantastic and nonsensical verses (some so old their meaning is long forgotten) are among the first magical words to sound in a child's ear.