"Cherished nursery Rhymes turned on their heads, inside out and all roundabout – fantastic!"
Dada is the movement that started after the first World War as a response to the brutality and inhumanity shown. A group of writers and artists thought nonsense and humour made more sense than pointless war. To this end they ‘played around with’ painting, writing, sculpture etc and actively cut up everyday objects and printed materials to make new art from them. The movement spread quickly around Europe and the world; no-one knows the exact reason why it is called Dada – there are several explanations circulating! Whatever the origins of the name – this collection of treasured and well-known nursey rhymes is most definitely in the Dada tradition.
Words and phrases from the nursery rhymes are variously ‘translated’ into Morse code, Esperanto, Secret codes, spoonerisms, haikus, and many more, creating a madly inventive selection that children will love reading, solving and playing with. All the different forms explored by Scieszka are explained in a detailed section at the end of the book, so that the reader can go away and create their own Dada works!
Similarly, Julia Rothman has based the illustrations on traditional nursery rhyme illustration that is then added to and altered in a suitably Dada-ish way. Full of fun and new ways of looking – a great resource for fun and learning.
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The classic nursery rhymes we know and love - upside-down, backward, in gibberish, and fresh out of bounds - as only Jon Scieszka could stage them. Mother knows best, but sometimes a little nonsense wins the day.
Inspired by Dadaism's rejection of reason and rational thinking, and in cahoots with Blanche Fisher Wright's The Real Mother Goose, this anthology of absurdity unravels the fabric of classic nursery rhymes and stitches them back together (or not quite together) in every clever way possible.
One by one, cherished nursery rhymes - from Humpty Dumpty to Hickory Dickory Dock, Jack Be Nimble to Mother Hubbard - fall prey to sly subversion as master of fracture Jon Scieszka and acclaimed illustrator Julia Rothman refashion them into comic strips, errant book reports, anagrams, and manic mash-ups. Playfully reconstructed, the thirty-six old-new rhymes invite further nonsense, bringing kids in on the joke and inviting them to revel in reimagining.
Featuring robust back matter, this irreverent take on the rhymes of childhood is a great gift for child readers, a rich classroom resource, and a love song to a living language.
The LoveReading4Kids Editorial Team have read and reviewed The Real Dada Mother Goose: A Treasury of Complete Nonsense and determined it is suitable for children aged 5-8 years old
The Real Dada Mother Goose: A Treasury of Complete Nonsense features in the following genres: Featured Books for 5+ readers, Featured Books for 7+ readers, Recommendations, Fantasy / Magical, Funny, Anthologies, Poetry Books for Children, Children's and Young Adult Fiction, Children’s, Teenage and Educational, Children’s / Teenage poetry, anthologies, annuals
The Real Dada Mother Goose: A Treasury of Complete Nonsense is available in Hardback
The Real Dada Mother Goose: A Treasury of Complete Nonsense was written by Jon Scieszka and published by Walker Books Ltd
The Real Dada Mother Goose: A Treasury of Complete Nonsense has 72 pages
£11.69
