MOTHER GOOSE’S LITTLE TREASURES

“When the rain raineth / And the goose winketh, / Little knows the gosling / What the goose thinketh.” Naming herself (with some justice) “Mother Goose’s self-appointed treasurer,” Opie digs deep into the coffers for 22 lesser-known nursery rhymes—“mysterious fragments,” she calls them, “long-ago laughter of little meaning and echoes of ancient spells.” The illustrations pick up on this air of otherworldliness; Wells’s smiling human and animal figures, all in antique dress, are a bit smaller in these settings, and look less solid than in her bigger, more intimate collaborations with Opie, My Very First Mother Goose (1996) and Here Comes Mother Goose (1999). The pictures may suggest scenarios for some of the more abstract lines here, but young goslings will still benefit most not by trying to make sense of the gnomic verses, but just listening to the rhythms of sound and language in them. (Poetry. 4-7)