By April Harden, MLIS, Youth Librarian, Bronson Brookside Library
Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle.
The cow jumped over the moon!
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon!
A rhyme of ridiculous nonsense, a part of the English-speaking collective conscious since medieval times, and about as iconic as it gets.
And yet “Hey Diddle Diddle,” along the general cannon of nursery rhymes, is quickly disappearing from the tongues of young children and their caretakers, parents and preschool teachers.
Why are nursery rhymes so beneficial to young learners? Mother Goose rhymes are by nature silly, catchy and fun to say. They tell stories with funny characters and startling situations that stick in the head and capture the imagination. Many parents know them by heart and can pull them out with ease at bath time, bedtime, mealtime, anytime.
The patterns, rhythms, and rhymes hook kids on language, broaden vocabulary, twist the tongue, build background knowledge, and attune ears to the sounds within words. A prominent 2009 study published in Cambridge University Press tied early childhood knowledge of nursery rhymes securely with later reading and spelling success.
Many of today’s parents object to sharing these rhymes with their children due to the dark origins of some of them. These theories are speculation, could be true, and are frightening to parents, but don’t worry. Children love the macabre.
Picture books keep these rhymes alive. By recycling centuries-old, beloved verses, authors and illustrators tap into our inherited wisdom, expand on what is possible in the imagination, and lead families to partake in ancient wise and ridiculous traditions.
If you are ready to dive into nursey rhymes with your littles, there are some excellent collections and picture books available at the Tulsa City-County Library. Here are a few of my recently published favorites:
Girls and Boys Come Out to Play by Tracey Campbell Pearson
An invitation from a goose with glasses to a midnight romp with Old King Cole, the cat and the fiddle, and a whole host of nursery rhyme characters.
Pop Goes the Nursery Rhyme by Betsy Bird
While this book wants to be a straight-forward telling of the classic rhymes, weasel keeps popping up to disrupt and cause a ruckus!
Humpty’s Great Fall by Amy Moore
This story is a peaceful opposite. Rather than a catastrophic fall, Humpty Dumpty has a great autumn, carving pumpkins and baking apple pies!
A Spider Named Itsy by Steve Light
This rhyme might seem basic, but the book will give you the whole harrowing backstory to Itsy Bitsy’s climb.
Mother Goose to the Rescue by Nate Evans
Mother Goose and her crew get the call, and it’s off to put out fires in nursery land! Rub-a-dub-dub and hickory, dickory dock, let’s tell rhymes around the clock.
