Mother Osprey: Nursery Rhymes for Buoys & Gulls (Arbordale Collection) - Softcover

Lucy Nolan spent many childhood days roaming two very special islands: Pawleys Island, SC, and Amelia Island, FL, where she collected the family stories that were shared around the dinner tables of hundred-year-old homes. It was only natural that she would eventually combine her love of the sea and storytelling into Mother Osprey: Nursery Rhymes for Buoys and Gulls. This playful book retells Mother Goose rhymes and embodies everything Lucy loves about America's coastlines! Lucy has been writing since she was four years old and is the author of several picture books and the popular Down Girl and Sit chapter books. She is also a two-time winner in the South Carolina Fiction project, sponsored by the South Carolina Arts Commission. Lucy lives in Columbia, SC, with her daughter and two rambunctious dogs. Award-winning illustrator Connie McLennan has been a freelance artist for over 25 years, since attending Academy of Art College in San Francisco. In addition to illustrating Mother Osprey: Nursery Rhymes for Buoys & Gulls, she has also illustrated The Rainforest Grew All Around, River Beds: Sleeping in the World's Rivers, Water Beds: Sleeping in the Ocean, and Octavia and her Purple Ink Cloud for Sylvan Dell Publishing. Her studio is at her home in California, where she lives with her husband, teenage son, and one big, black cat.

PreSchool-Grade 2—Perfect reading before a trip to the shore, these beach versions of Mother Goose rhymes combine familiar rhythm and meter with new content. The colorful illustrations amplify the selections they accompany and invite children to stop and linger over each picture. "Lydia Gail has lost her whale./He's somewhere around Nantucket./Leave him alone, and he'll make himself known./He's hiding in her bucket." In the accompanying illustration, the child's toy can be spied atop her yellow pail. Animals are the stars of the art, with only a few children and adults featured in "An Old Woman Who Lived in a Shell," "Lobster Pies," "Two Skippers from Texas," "Tweedle-Dum & Tweedle-Dee," and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." These lighthearted verses read like plays on words for adults familiar with the originals and will be fun for children. Such titles as "Mary Had a Little Clam," "Jack & June (went up a dune)," and "Hatteras Light Is Falling Down" are rooted in the Eastern seashore, while "I Saw a Ship A-Sailing" sets a prairie schooner on the Oregon Trail and "The Witch of November, 1913" commemorates the storm that battered the Great Lakes and sank 12 ships, killing more than 270 people. These clever reworkings end with factoids about each poem; a two-page map pinpointing the location of each rhyme, and a one-page list of map activity and poem-related questions (with answers). Discussion questions wrap up these activities.—Frances E. Millhouser, formerly at Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA END