Mother Goose for Mothers and Fathers and Others: A Historical Look at Nursery Rhymes: Their Words and Those Who Used Them - Hardcover

by John Ohst (Author)

There are hundreds of old nursery rhymes that children would love to hear and adults would love to share with them. Unfortunately, many were composed hundreds of years ago, so now they're not used much anymore because some words are hard to understand. Tiny tots don't care. They just love to hear the sounds of the words. But older kids like to know what the words mean. Sometimes, we adults don't understand them either. This happens so often that several publishers have stopped printing these poems. The bad news? Some wonderful nursery rhymes just fade away. The good news? This book can help. It's filled with information that can "dust off" the old words so readers can see what they meant and hear how they sounded. Readers can also learn how kids and adults lived hundreds of years ago: the games they played, the songs they sang, the foods they ate, the jokes they told, the lessons they learned . . . even the troubles they had when things went bad. The nursery rhymes in this book can help readers bring the past into the present.

Author Biography

John Ohst is Assistant Professor Emeritus from the State University of New York at Canton. He has taught college classes in English as a second language, linguistics, academic communication skills (in reading, writing, speaking, and listening), composition, and children's literature. He now lives with his wife and cat in northern New York, between the St. Lawrence River and the Adirondacks.