Oswin and Edward Lear

[watervole]

 Oswin has recently been enjoying Richard reading Dr Seuss books like 'One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish' to her.  While the illustrations are amusing, it's probably the rhyme and rhythm of the words that are a big part of the appeal.

So, today, I tried 'The Jumblies' on her.  (the last time I tried, she was still too young and wasn't interested, but now she's nearly 2 1/2)

Big success.

Read it half a dozen times throughout the day and followed that up with a couple of readings of 'The Owl and the Pussycat'.

Only a few pictures for each poem.  Definitely the words that she loved. Big smile at the end each time and requests for another reading.

Edward Lear's poems appear to be working for yet another generation of children.  Oswin has no idea what all the made-up words mean, but it doesn't seem to bother her any more than it did my generation.  Personally, I think a runcible spoon is a spoon with holes in it (the kind you use for draining things).  It fits Lear's cheerful illogic.

 Far and few, far and few,
            Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
      Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
            And they went to sea in a Sieve.

I think the time may have come to get Kipling off my bookshelf.  Oh yes, my best beloved.  I'm itching to read her the 'The Elephant's Child' and the other Just So stories. My father read them to me, and I read them to my children.  They were written to be read aloud, the words roll along.  "What does the crocodile have for dinner?"
"Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out."

Go and read it again, you know you want to!  And if you've never read it, find a child and read it to them immediately.

Comments

[pensnest]

Oh, yes, 'The Elephant's Child' is wonderful to read aloud!

My own favourite, though, is where Winnie The Pooh gets into a Tight Place. I can practically do that one without the book, and my Beast and I use "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" to indicate that Someone Is Being Greedy.

[kerravonsen]

Oh yes.
And Hillaire Belloc and Ogden Nash, too.

[igenlode]

Speaking of made-up words, how about "Jabberwocky"?

(I learned a lot of unlikely vocabulary from Beatrix Potter -- I wonder how many children acquired 'soporific' from "The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies"? I don't think unknown words really worry children, because they're used to coming across them all the time anyway...)

[la-avispa.livejournal.com]

I envy you. A little. My daughter is only 15 months old, and she refuses to listen to someone reading to her. But I know, that it'll be soon now!

I've posted the information about my warp untwister http://la-avispa.livejournal.com/123888.html It has even occured to me it might be worth patenting it :)

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

She sounds like shes about the right age for Hairy Maclary. A wonderful series about a dog and what he and the other local pets get up to from New Zealand that my two loved as smalls. This is off the wikipedia entry and is from the first book describing all the dogs going for a walk. Wonderful to read aloud.

"Schnitzel von Krumm
with a very low tum,
Bitzer Maloney
all skinny and bony,
Muffin McClay
like a bundle of hay,
Bottomley Potts
covered in spots,
Hercules Morse
as big as a horse

and Hairy Maclary
from Donaldson's Dairy"

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/lynley-dodd/

[del-c.livejournal.com]

All these years I've been remembering it as "Few and far, far and few"! I still quite like my way.

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