GREGORY GRIGGS AND OTHER NURSERY RHYME PEOPLE

Lobel delights with his selections as much as his illustrations in these 35 lesserknown folk rhymes, all with human subjects. After Gregory Griggs, posing stoutly in his 27 different wigs (Lobel's 28th square shows him embarrassed by baldness), come a Miss Mackay whose "knives and forks have run away," a little boy who "whistled up a tune,/And all the little sausages/ Danced around the room," a furtive "Hannah Bantry/in the pantry,/gnawing at a mutton bone. ." and the perfect "Jerry Hall/he is so small/a rat could eat him,/hat and all." There are some fresh, first-rate limericks, a twist on Miss Moffat, and a brisk ten lines on a "mad" family that could be ancestral Stupids. And all their foibles, talents, and comical conditions are keynoted with style and assurance in Lobel's solid little figures—as splendid in pastel rags (or, in one case, sprouting grass) as in 18th-century finery.