Book 59: I Saw Esau

Book 59: I Saw Esau, A schoolchild's pocket book, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, Candlewick Press 2000 (collection originally published in Great Britain in 1947).  Preschool to Elementary

This is one of those books that I picked up, years before my son was expected, just because the cover amused me. It helped greatly that Maurice Sendak was the illustrator, but it is an amusing book.

I don't want to give too much away, but in the introduction Iona Opie explains how this book came into being. She says the rhymes contained "were clearly not the rhymes that a grandmother might sing to a grandchild on her knee". However, for the past two Aprils, I have been choosing some rhymes out of this book to read to my toddler son for National Poetry Month. I've probably warped him for life, but maybe in a good way.