Sing Mother Goose & Sing in Praise

I have been surprised by the amount of music in the early Caldecott winner and honor books. There have been many stories that include a song or two as part of the book, like... Juanita by Leo Politi (Caldecott Honor 1949)

However Sing Mother Goose (Caldecott honor 1946) and Songs of Praise (Caldecott honor 1947) both by Opal Wheeler and illustrated by Marjorie Torrey don't have just one or two songs - they are illustrated collections of music.
See the video below for a closer look.

 For me the strength of the illustrations in these two books is the color palette and the rich feel on the full color pages. 

On Wednesday nights we head over to my In-Laws' for Family Dinner Night. Cupcake likes to sing at the piano with grandma. Her favorite song is "One Foot Other Foot" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Allegro" - mostly because it has a baby in the illustrations on that page, but she was ok with trying a few selections from Sing Mother Goose this past Wednesday.
(Sorry for the sound quality - I like to record "stress-free" style using my phone.)





After Cupcake lost interest and went to find out what the older cousins were up to downstairs (Wii Resort Sports, just in case you were wondering about the background noise in the video above), my Mother-In-Law played a piece from Songs of Praise.  
Notice the much more interesting looking "Songs We Sing", a collection of show tunes by Rodgers and Hammerstein from 1957.





Another plug for my awesome Mother-In-Law who is a fabulous person and blogs at HomesMSP about real estate and the Minneapolis/St Paul area.


Each Wednesday in a feature called Wednesdays Unplugged she posts about our family and a recipe from our weekly family dinner night.



Interested in joining us on the Caldecott Medal and Honor Book Reading Challenge? Find out more here.