An uplifting and hugely entertaining collection of playground rhymes, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, leading authorities on children's rhymes, and with artwork by perhaps the world's most influential picture book illustrator, Maurice Sendak.
In print again twenty years after it was first published, I saw Esau is a wonderful pocket book collection of over 170 playground rhymes, some of them hundreds of years old. From nonsense to riddles, retaliation rhymes to insults, the chants of schoolchildren across the centuries are revived in this joyful celebration of life and laughter. Sendak's boisterous illustrations revel in the fun, mischief and rebelliousness of childhood, and, as Iona Opie recognises in her wonderful introduction, much of the book's charm comes from its sense of the extraordinary indomitable spirit of children: "In Maurice Sendak's pictures the child always wins".
- ISBN10 1844285111
- ISBN13 9781844285112
- Publish Date 6 September 2004 (first published 30 April 1992)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 January 2024
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Walker Books Ltd
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 128
- Language English