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The Space Child's Mother Goose
The Scoop
In the mid-fifties, a poetry and science fiction fan teamed up with a pen illustrator to produce The Space Child's Mother Goose. Decades later, enough people still remember this book fondly that existing copies sold for up to $150 apiece. Purple House Press, a small Texas publisher, continues to reprint influential books from that era. Their reprint of this classic doggerel (in the best sense of the word) will appeal to children of the 50s through the 00s.
What's to Like?This is a clever, fun book. Instead of making up alien names, or substituting "robot" for characters in traditional nursery rhymes, the scientific concepts are integral to the poems themselves. Consider this excerpt:
Three jolly sailors from Blaydon-on-TyneFortunately, the glossary in the back has (brief) explanations of some of the weightier terms. Combined with a good encyclopedia, there's nothing here an inquisitive eight-year-old couldn't decipher.
They went to sea in a bottle by Klein.
Since the sea was entirely inside the hull
The scenery seen was exceedingly dull.
Winsor pays tribute to the classics, postulating how the king's men could have saved Humpty Dumpty with a time machine, or waxing eloquent about the theory Jack built. There's a general air of... excitement, maybe, surrounding the book. (Something else reminds me of Kit Williams' Masquerade riddle, though I can't put my finger on it.)
The illustrations nicely complement the text. The simple, anthropomorphic birdmen seem oddly familiar, like undamned Bosch characters. They're appropriately Spartan, though with plenty of important details. The gestalt evokes the feel of an old Tom Swift novel. Maybe it's the matter of fact, "let's fly to the moonbase in our rocket car" post-Sputnik optimism.
This is a fine book for children, and adults with child-like spirits. It might stir a latent interest in astronomy or mathematics. Even if it doesn't, the new and interesting words and witty rhymes are worth memorizing. This book's been due a reprint for several years.
Be sure to catch the recurring poem about a chronologically gifted black hen. It's reprinted in French, German, Greek, Swahili, and Chinese, with pictures to match.
What's to ConsiderSome kids might not like the book -- it takes a certain kind of mindset to absorb new concepts normally reserved for middle-school geometry class. It's hard to resist trying it out, though. Find an elementary school-aged friend or relative and spend an hour working through the riddles.
The SummaryHemos recommended this book as "cute." It is. It's not cute in a saccharine way. It's almost as if the author were reciting his poems to a straight-laced Nobel committee -- before turning backstage to give the rest of us a great big wink. He's hoodwinked the establishment.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
A space age child's "mother goose" is definately
"A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking (www.mchawking.com)
I love Daniel Pinkwater's books. Great non-idiot children books (probably for kids a bit older than this book is intended for -- junior high or a bit earlier).
It is one of the great things about the internet: nobody knows you're a dog :-)
More seriously though, one of the problems with children's books is that children develop their reading skills at different times. So we need easy books but on subjects 15-16 year olds will find interesting, likewise we need books for 5-8 year olds which do not treat them like morons, but which have material suitable for their age.
I remember reading Beowulf when I was 9 years old, and I thought it was pretty cool, but it was slightly above my age range.
...A&E was running a Biography-type show on Sesame Street, and it got me to thinking: when did (children's) television lose its sense of wonderment and education? Teletubbies and Barney are what passes for kid-friendly "educational" TV these days? No wonder we have to pump our rugrats full of prozac 5 years after they watch that tripe.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Although they are quite different, Ignorance
and Stupidity often times go hand in hand.
Case in point - This post and the many that may follow.
Let's repeatedly point this out statement to our
youngsters before we tuck them into bed. They are probably such idiots that they won't understand anyway.
You know, Salman Rushdie published a new book this year. He's a widely respected, if controversial author with an incredible feeling for the zeitgeist. I haven't read this latest book, but I have heard that it includes many references to the internet. Would this qualify as slashdot enough? What would it take to get you guys to review a book for adults?
I know you have a lot of teenagers on the site, but that doesn't mean you actually have to cater to them. Encourage them to stretch themselves a little. It can't hurt.
Along the same lines (a "reissue" of a space/science-oriented work for kids from the 1950's) I can highly recommend They Might Be Giant's Why Does The Sun Shine.
There's actually a quote from this book in the back of Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's "Gravitation", the standard graduate level textbook in General Relativity.
The idea of a children's book devoted to science and technology is deliscious. But then you can have all sorts of childrens books that can subtlely influence the mind of a child.
For example how about a child's story about a man who wanted to own all of the windows in the world?
"I do not care if I am a louse,
You cannot have a window in your house
Not round, or short, or fat, or square,
You cannot have a window, not anywhere"
;)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"Possible probable my black hen,
:)
She lays eggs in the relitive when,
She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now,
Because she's unable to postulate how."
I still remember that rhyme from when I first read the book in the early 70's during my larval stage programming. Thanks for posting a link. Now I will finally get a copy
There once was a guy named Bill Soon it looked like he was King Midas With one fal swoop companies he would kill Then along one day came Linus, He blew away all the critics With a little thing called Linux Did i just create my own type of Poetry? Cuz that doesnt roll off the tounge very well.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
I loved this book when I was growing up. I have no idea where my parents got a copy- it must have been well out of print by the time I read it- but it's wonderfully funny book. It's great to read that it's back in print; I think I'll pick up a copy to give to my niece.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
At last, a copy of my own - and the kids are sophisticated enough mathematically to get it all. Maybe I'll get three, one for me and one for each of them.
The review quotes up to $150 for a used copy, but that's probably for a hard cover in good condition.
My wife told the dealer she didn't care about condition, and got a dog-eared paperback copy for something like $30 or $50.
OTOH, the slashdot effect could drive prices considerably higher.
I always loved this book. An interesting gift from a grandfather made so much cooler when I found it was from the 50s and out of print. Seeing as fatbrain has a hardcover, I'll have to 'upgrade' :)
I wanted to buy the Roguelet's ABC for my kids, and was disappointed to discover that not only was it never printed as a book, but only a few letters of the alphabet were ever written.
Maybe completing the alphabet could become a collaborative literary project. SourceForge, anyone?
T:
One big monster, he called TROLL.
He don't rock, and he don't roll;
Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
When I was about six or seven, I used to love reading Richard Scarry books, especially the ones about how things work. I loved taking things to bits and putting them back together -- or at least trying to! I always hope that when I have children, they'll be interested in those kinds of things too, so I can build them the cool robots I just learned about in class today! ;-)
Just wondering, in the experience of the parents (or researchers) among us, to what extent are children's interests affected by the interests of their parents?
As a kid, I enjoyed George Gamow's "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland". I recently introduced my 11 year old daughter to Mr. Tompkins. (So yes, to whoever it was, /.'ers *DO* have kids!).
It's a great introduction to modern physics.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
well, I would guess that you don't have kids of this age, and are just postulating based on "popular" opinion.
Seseme Street is still on, though I find it quite a bit more lame than it was when I was a kid. And they brought back Zoom about 3 years ago. Electric Company is still dead, and that kinda sucks. I loved that show.
However, all is not lost. There are shows like Arthur, Dragon Tales, Clifford, Caillou, Sagwa and the like that deal with social skills. There are shows like In Between the Lions (this show rocks!) and Reading Rainbow which focus on reading skills. Noddy is kind of a cool show. And were still just on PBS.
If we hop over to Nick Jr., we get shows that promote problem solving and "audience" participation with Dora the Explorer and Blues Clues. And more social shows like Franklin and Little Bill and Maurice Sendak's Little Bear.
On Disney, we have some other cool shows like PB&J Otter and Out of the Box.
It's not all bad...and having cable or a dish helps, but just because all you hear about is teletubbies and barney doesn't mean all of the kids shows suck that bad.
Regarding the old edition that has been out-of-print for so long:
It's really a crime to let books out of print sell for over $100. Publishers should react to this and re-edit the volumes but to my great despair, not much is done from their part.
I came to look for some great books that I wanted to buy again and was so sad to see their prices being so high and therefore unaffordable to me. I contacted the publisher at the time and the response I got were that it was not a big market enough for them to do the reprint. Even when I mentioned that these books had a regular waiting line of 10 people on half.com with a minimum price tag of $400-$600 (or about 500x what the book was selling at the time.)
Unfortunately, with them having the publishing rights, there is not much one can do to solve this problem.
PPA
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
I normally don't troll about spelling, esp. on reasonably confusing words, but given the subject matter I guess it's necessary. This text added to countermeasure the anti-lameness countermeasure.
...and some of us have (or are planning to have) geeky children
I've had my eye out for a second hand copy of this for years. Now that it is being reprinted I will go and order a copy for my neice. I loved this book when I was younger, along with "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" by George Gamow, which is less silly and a useful introduction to relativity and quantum physics for kids of all ages (and also now in reprint in paperback). I'm so glad to hear that they have rereleased this book :-)
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Everybody should read "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death."
The book is definitely aimed at children and not adults, but the concepts are interesting and cool enough that it's interesting geek reading too. I still occasionally find myself reciting erudite-yet-silly bits from it, and my original copy is one of my most treasured posessions.
The book is full of translations of "My Black Hen" into a zillion languages -- they're enough to make any kid think about philosophy:
Probably, Possible, my black hen.
She lays eggs in the relative when.
She doesn't lay eggs in the positive now,
Because she's unable to postulate how!
There's no guarantee that SCMG will make your kid an astrophysicist -- but it'll sure help...
The Great Brain books were great...author, John D. Fitzgerald
Christina! Bring me an axe!
if you can find it, is "A Stress Analysis Of A Strapless Evening Gown," edited by Robert A. Baker. It consisted primarily of articles from the Journal of Irreproducible Results and The Worm-Runners Digest, along with verse including some excerpts from "The Space Child's Mother Goose" (including "Three Jolly Sailors") and a poem about the neutrino from John Updike. Subjects of the essays, as I remember, include the title (interesting reading for a ten-year-old male back in the sixties), linguistic reform, logic, psychoanalyzing various of the rockets used in the early space program, and simulating the behavior of a randomly-designed computer by immersing a caged cat into a tank of water ("it exhibited an initial period of apparently random activity, but eventually settled into a quiescent state").
It's out of print but your local library may still have a copy, or you can track it down from a used bookseller.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I too encounterd that book in my youth .. and found it again here in the local library. So don't complain about high internet prices before checking out the free options!
I'm hoping to animate it some time - and make up a few more poems myself. I could even put out an edition of THE SIGNS OF MOTHER GOOSE: Semiotic Rhymes for Children...or some book where all the poetry is in M68K assembler,FORTH or JCL or whatever.
[bottles of beer on the wall, anyone?]
Fans of this book can pop over to Jef Poskanzer's home page to hear ALL off the Singing Science records (not just Space Songs, whence TMBG copped "Why Does The Sun Shine?".) visit: http://www.acme.com/jef/science_songs/. GLory to Tom Glazer, Dottie Collins, Marias and Miranda educating you with folk songs of Space, Weather, Nature and More Nature, Experiments and Energy & Motion!
The other books I read a lot in this vein as a child were the two anthologies "Mathematical Magpie" and "Fantasia Mathematica", books of short stories, poems, cartoons,jokes and songs with a Mathematical theme, edited by Clifton Fadiman.
You may have read a lot of these before, but there they are all in one place. (Nine Billion Names Of God, The Feeling Of Power,--And he built a Crooked House, The No-Sided Professor .. )
Rudy Rucker edited a similar (mostly inferior and a little redundant) collection called The Mathenauts much later.
-- Real Stupidity is the Artificial Intelligence of the 21st century
the pen0r meets the vagin0r and weeeeeeeeeeeeheheheheheheeeeeeeeeeee sex0rs mad pr0pz 2 the trollzzz y0 word to ma bitch dawg mastah and for my next trick, I become a goth by listening to the cure. woe and dread, it's friday's I'm in love.
Roadkill is yummy.
Some years ago, COSMIC VIEW: The Universe in 40 Jumps - by Kees Boeke was put online. It was the precursor of "Powers of Ten", and another of these half-century old classics - out of print, hard to find, but still well liked. There was interest in putting SCMG online as well, but the reprint was planned, so it didn't happen. This is a reoccurring situation.
:)
Which raises some questions. If one wishes to maximize the number of people, around the world, exposed to some out-of-print book, is one better off with a reprinting, or with the work drifting towards the public domain? If reprinting costs drop, and more OOP books are reprinted, does this help or hurt us?
SCMG won't be PD for half a century.
A reprinting makes it more likely copyright will be enforced.
So is it a good thing, or a bad thing?
Interested in pulling out your scanner and that old book? Here is a sketch of Copyright duration (but IANALawyer). Within the US (other countries vary, and I don't know what that means for the web), if it was published before 1923, it's public domain - scan away. 1923 to 1963 is a mess. It may be PD - you have to ask the US Copyright Office. And apparently under GATT, foreign works can be un-PD'ed. With a copyright notice after 1963 - give up. 1964 to 1978, copyright lasts a century. After 1978, 3/4 century after the death of the last author standing. Maybe your grandchildren can scan it. Or great-grandchildren. Notice things are getting worse with time. Thank the entertainment industry ("thanks Disney!"), international trade agreements importing a European emphasis on author rights over public good, and the deep wisdom and intelligence of your congress critters. Perhaps there will be a backlash at some point...?
The Phantom Tollbooth. I loved this book when I was a kid, and I wish I could find my copy so I could read it again as an adult. It sounds like the coverage of mathematical concepts covered in PT isn't quite as advanced as in SCMG (which I haven't read), it still deals with interesting stuff (the nature of infinity, some logic, etc) in a really cool universe.
---- I'm going to lead you kicking and screaming, giggling and laughing into the future.
ran an essay by George Johnson titled "Quantum Stew: How Physicists Are Redefining Reality's Rules" In its first paragraph, it mentions "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" and tells of one of Mr. Tompkins weird experiences when he dreams he is in a world where Plank's constant has been altered. The essay ran on Tuesday, October 16, Section F; Page 4; Column 2; Science Desk
harsly karma , enthusasism Hooray trolls Hooray!
Uh... I'm asking for a friend (grin)
I don't think any 9 yr old would grasp old english very well
Another good book is The Ants Who Took Away Time by William Kotzwinkle (Doubleday, 1978). The summary from the copyright page: "A tribe of giant ants steal the Great Timepiece and cause time to stand still throughout the world." If you've got a kid who likes science and/or scifi, this is another title you may want to pick up if you notice it in a used book store.
I think that most kids wouldn't like it. Take a sample of kids in your neighborhood and read them some of the stuff. You'll probabnly find blank stares and a longing to go listen to some pirated Britney Spears or something.
Depends on the child, of course, and on the parenting said child has had. Yes, your average kid-off-the-street wouldn't handle it well, but I've met a few proto-geeks (with parents who've shielded them from pirated Britney Spears, or better yet simply exposed them to better stuff) who would no doubt handle it well.
I'm quite certain that proto-geekdom is more than 50% a matter of really good parenting. As for how exactly one goes about such really good parenting, I don't know yet... but then, 'twill be a few more years (at least!) before I need to worry about that anyhow.
If it's out of print, and I can't get it anywhere, then a printout is maybe all I can have, but if someone gave me a choice between a bound book or a printout, I'm going with the book.
I print out manuals and such all the time, and that's fine. But for a literary work, I'd rather have a book. Especially a kids book, which usually has good artwork.
and frankly, I'd rather my kids get the impression that I think they're worth the money for a real book. My kids, at 6 & 4, already have more books than I had when I left home for college, and I'll keep buying them books as long as they keep reading them...
...like this in a long time. This book sounds like it may have actually been decently inspiring [I hope not a manner simmilar to `jonathan livingston seagull']. Seriously, though, read some of the earlier non moderated comments. The initial response was of a caliber to often absent on slashdot these days.
Oh well...
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
I posted a review on this book TWO MONTHS
ago and it was rejected, so there.
Next time listen to me.