Are your kids in to nursery rhymes? My 3-year-old is constantly asking me to rehearse nursery rhymes for him. And he’s actually quite quick at learning them and repeating them back to me.

Tired of “Jack and Jill” and “Humpty Dumpty”, I decided I needed to learn a few more, so I searched online and visited my local bookshop. First I bought The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes; I liked that each rhyme is accompanied by a detailed description of its history and origins, social and political uses, and variations. Why did Yankee Doodle call the feather in his cap ‘macaroni’? The book tells you why. But the book, with all its descriptions and lack of illustrations, proved to be a bit too much for a 3-year-old. So I tried again.

And this time with success. Lavender’s Blue: A Book of Nursery Rhymes, an Oxford University Press book originally published in 1954, is filled with colorful illustrations which beautifully capture the essence of the rhymes. My son loves it!

-Courtney