Title: Honey For You, Honey For Me: A First Book of Nursery Rhymes
Author(collected by): Michael Rosen
Illustrator: Chris Riddell
Publisher: Walker Books
Genre: Children’s picture book, Nursery rhymes
Book format: Hardback
Sweet Strawberries: 
Description: Honey for breakfast, Honey for tea. Honey for YOU, Honey for ME.
Flying pigs, wobbling plates of jelly and a giant with a terrible fear of mice: welcome to the topsy-turvy world of nursery rhymes. One of the most popular poets writing today, Michael Rosen has chosen familiar playground songs to sit beside forgotten gems for a seminal new collection. These rhymes are brought to vivid life by award-winning artist Chris Riddell, in his magnificent, exuberant pictures. Expect familiar faces, from Jumping Joan to Miss Mary Mack-Mack-Mack – but also plenty of surprises.
*Free copy provided by publisher for review…
Review: This is a wonderful book of nursery rhymes for children with some very fun rhymes and many I’ve never heard of. ‘Honey for You, Honey For Me’ is a large hardback book with lots of thick matt pages of some text and a lot of lovely illustrations. The hard cover has a dust jacket which has the same picture as on the hard cover underneath. The book begins with a very brief introduction by Michael Rosen which explains that this collection of nursery rhymes includes both well loved ones and others which are less known from the past.
I love this book, it’s such a lovely book to have as a first nursery rhymes book and it feels so engaging! After reading the introduction every double page, or occasionally every page, is filled with a short nursery rhyme and large illustrations showing different things. I have to admit to not ever hearing many of these nursery rhymes before, while there are ones that I do know like ‘Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate’ I didn’t know about the full rhyme or many of the others in here. But each rhyme is so fun and engaging and I love how interesting they are.
The text of each rhyme is easy to read and I love how this book feels like it encourages children to read along and is so engaging due to the different colours used and the pictures that surround each rhyme. All of the illustrations are so wonderful and I loved looking at these alongside the rhymes. The rhymes often have children in them, or animals and I love how the pictures are an additional thing to look at even after you’ve finished reading out the rhyme. There are dancing elephants, children’s toys, kids dressed up in different outfits and in different situations, etc., it just feels so engaging and I love the illustrations style which makes everything look so good.
Not every single nursery rhyme rhymes in this book, but the majority do and I love how this book brings together many rhymes that have been forgotten or are just unknown to many, including me. It makes me wonder where these rhymes all originated from and this book is one I’ll certainly be reading through gain, especially with younger family members. I would also recommend this book to anyone looking for a first nursery rhymes book. It’s fun, big and the illustrations and text just make this so engaging. 🙂
What do you think of this book? Do you have any favourite nursery rhymes? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂
The Strawberry Post 