It was the shock of my lifetime to discover that kids really do dig nursery rhymes.  To be a bit more specific about it, my kid in particular.  Here she was, not even a year and a half old, and suddenly she could not get enough of those collections by Tomie dePaola and Arnold Lobel.  And it all started with a lamb.  A little one at that.

I’d received the Tomie dePaola board book of Mary Had a Little Lamb in the great Molly donation of 2011.  It’s signed by Mr. dePaola himself and if I were a practical woman I’d probably mount it and hang it in some fashion on my wall.  Instead, I allowed my grubby, grimy, adorable spawn to paw through it.  No gnawing.  I drew the line there.  But if she wanted to read it (and she seemed to) all power to her.

After I sang the book to her the first time she was enthralled.  Seriously, nothing like this book had ever enraptured her.  I’d sort of assumed that the 19th century setting and subtle palette would not appeal to her baby brain.  So wrong was I.  I then started to experiment.  I brought home other Mary Had a Little Lamb titles.  Each time I did the kiddo delighted.  She’d compare pictures, their similarities and differences.  She got her own little white lamb stuffed animal and would carry it with her when the books were read.  This all culminated to the point where when we visited a downtown Kalamazoo city creche this past Christmastime, it was the plaster lambs that were the hit of the day.  She’s sheep crazy, this kid.

So it all got me to thinking: Whence Mary?  Whence that little lamb?  And how do different picture books of the duo stack up in the long run?

First stop, I picked up my copy of Albert Jack’s Pop Goes the Weasel: The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes.  Truth be told, I’ve grown wary of this resource.  It sometimes seems to come up with more theories than facts, but on the subject of Mary it was loquacious.  There was admittedly some speculation as to whether or not the poem was written as a kind of Christian homily.  You know.  Mary.  The lamb.  The true origins of the poem come from one Sarah Josepha Hale who, depending on whom you ask, submitted the poem to Dr. Lowell Mason when he asked writers to contribute songs and rhymes for the Boston school system.  It was a big time hit from the start.  Some speculation arose as to whether or not the poem was written by Hale or by a John Roulstone instead and whether or not there really was a Mary and a lamb.  Whatever the case, it was fun to learn that in Sterling, Mass. there’s a statue of the lamb in the town center.

Awww.

Back to the book that started this all.  I found that Tomie dePaola wrote an extensive piece online about this book, as well as why he chose it, and the fact that he found he added fuel to the fire when he credited the poem to Sarah Josepha Hale and not Mr. Roulstone.  Reading Mr. dePaola’s funny and well-researched piece I realized all too late who Sarah was.

Do these titles ring any bells?