With their jaunty rhymes, nonsensical humour, and fascination with food, animals, and weather, nursery rhymes have a timeless appeal rediscovered by each new generation of parents and children. This delightful collection was first published in the 1890s and preserved in a fragile state in Toronto Public Library’s Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. The reproduction preserves the colour and aged feel of the well-loved, much-read original.

Adapted from Young England’s Nursery Rhymes, this Canadian version changed some details to suit the new country: the green leaves that began to sprout in February in the English version now do so in May in the Canadian book. The children in the charming Kate Greenaway-style illustrations, however, are fancifully dressed in garments ranging from powdered wigs and knee breeches to shepherds’ smocks – no more tied to a real time and place than the humorous absurdities of the rhymes themselves.

Details of a few rhymes may trouble us now: the boy with an arrow shooting at a sparrow or Little Polly Flinders being whipped for sitting in the cinders. Nevertheless, the freshness, vitality, and sometimes startling beauty of these traditional verses can echo “over the hills and far away,” creating in early childhood a lifelong enjoyment of poetry and language. Among the familiar rhymes are many that invite participation and activity: dandling, counting off, chucking under the chin, and guessing riddles (happily, answers are provided).