JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1633

The history of Mother Goose–but real and imagined–is a long and winding story, the blending of the old stories to more modern times almost as odd as the stories themselves.  This entry is what I think is the first “Space Age” version of the tales, though mostly it concerns itself with the ideals of Mother Goose more so than the stories themselves. 

The physics-esque approach to the old idea rests in the verses of Frederick Winsor in his The Space Child’s Mother Goose, printed by Simon and Schuster in 1958, the stories helped along by some fine and tech-intricate drawings by Marian Parry.  The poems are occasionally delightful as works in themselves; but when you grade the work on a curve of science poems/funny science, it gets an even higher grade.  Let’s face it–there weren’t that many works in this genre in the 1950’s/’60’s, so it gets a little help just for being a friend to the lonesome in the pop-science-poem arena.  (The text for the volume can be found here; and if you wanted to own it you may purchase it from our blog bookstore, here.)