(This post is in honor of my mother Marian, one of the wisest–and kindest–women I have ever known.) The Owl and the Pussy-cat is a famous nonsense poem written by the English poet, author, and illustrator Edward Lear.  A contemporary of Lewis Carroll, Lear first published the poem in 1871, and it has been illustrated and re-illustrated ever since.  The edition to the left was illustrated by Paul Galdone (Clarion, 1987).   Jan Brett also illustrated a Caribbean-style version in 1989...

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Well, what can you say about Mother Goose?  My mother adored Mother Goose and read it to us often.  But frankly, as a parent I never really got into it.  I know the historic and literary relevance of nursery rhymes, but they just didn’t do much for me.  My kids never seemed much interested in them either. Then I got the Mother Goose edition selected and illustrated by Mary Engelbreit (HarperCollins, 2005 with an...

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Some children’s books are classics.  Take Munro Leaf’s The Story of Ferdinand (Robert Lawson, illustrator).  Originally published in 1936 by Viking, Ferdinand tells the story of a gentle, little bull who doesn’t want to butt and stick his horns around.  Ferdinand wants to “sit just quietly under the cork tree and smell the flowers.”  But when Ferdinand sits on a bee and gets stung, Ferdinand gets picked to fight in the bullfight in Madrid.  Will Ferdinand fight?...

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