Nursery rhymes from all over the world – a gallery to share with children

Nursery rhymes pass down to all of us. Wherever we live these rhymes sow the seeds of a delight in language and stories. This beautiful gallery celebrates the diverse voices that speak to children in verse with illustrations by 77 international artists, collected together in Elizabeth Hammill’s new anthology Over the Hills and Far Away

Elizabeth Hamill

  • Just as we snuggle up for a family bedtime story, so here, as the sun sets on the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, Native American watercolour artist Michael Chiago shows us an everyday Tohono O’odham tribal scene as mothers and children gather to listen “in the blue night that is settling” to a storyteller who wonders: “How shall i begin my song…”
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  • In this beautiful lullaby from the Akan people of Ghana, a mother sings of her love for her baby: “Someone would like to have you for her child but you are mine”. Ghanaian children’s writer and illustrator Meshack Asare captures the tenderness of this mother who, though poor in means - “I have you to rear on a torn old mat”, is rich in feeling
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  • Irish born artist Yasmeen Ismail has fun with two favourite English rhymes. She gives a new twist to the wonderful nonsense of “Baby and I were baked in a pie” and shows us how to play “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Baker’s man” - setting both rhymes in a busy street scene.
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  • Inuit Artist Andrew Qappik from Nunavut in northeastern Canada introduces us to our fingers and to aspects of past and present Arctic life in this imaginative interpretation of an old Inuit finger game from Greenland
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  • Mother Goose rhymes are borderless. They travel the world with ease. Listen to these four Little Miss Muffets: first; the original English one, illustrated by Clara Vuillamy, then an American one - Amy Schwartz; a Jamaican one - Jenny Bent, and an Australian one - Bruce Whatley. Try imagining your own versions.
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  • Wherever children play games, you will also hear counting out rhymes - often nonsensical with made-up words and verse fragments. Pippa Curnick, a Seven Stories/Frances Lincoln Illustration Competition winner, deftly uses elements in the rhymes to create an imaginative world that reveals facets of four cultures in a riot of colour, life and fun
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  • Here are four deliciously different English and American rhymes about food which please the ear with sound and repetition, humour, and an intriguing “what if” question: “If all the world were paper...?” American artist Nina Crews creates a white cut paper world as a backdrop for her photographs of contemporary urban children acting out the rhymes.
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  • Riddles for all ages are almost as old as language itself. Today these rhyming enigmatic descriptions or puzzles are almost exclusively the property of children’ worldwide. English artist Michael Foreman creates an intriguingly imaginative story here from five riddles - one from Latin America, one from China, and three from England
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  • German artist Axel Scheffler brings his deft humourous touch to two quietly dramatic English rhymes about travel. Even the grass is crooked in his rendering of “There was a crooked man, And he walked a crooked mile”, while Dr Foster’s mishaps on his journey to Gloucester are watched by a wayfaring snail, some surprised sheep and a quizzical raven
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  • Who built the ark is an African American spiritual telling the biblical story of Noah and the ark - a flood tale similar to flood myths from a variety of cultures. It is a counting rhyme too. African American artist Jerry Pinkney shows Noah building with his hammer, the skies darkening as it begins to rain, and the dove that brings the ark to land
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  • How we imagine ghosts and spirits varies from culture to culture. In this arresting Native American spirit song of the Papagio or Tohono O’dham people, we are invited to imagine spirit people traveling as ‘downy white feathers’. Tohono O’odham artist Allison Francisco brings an other worldly beauty to her interpretation of this song
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  • Here are two popular traditional lullabies - a “hush song” from the pre-Civil War American South, and a New Zealand Maori “slumber song”. Holly Sterling, a Seven Stories/Frances Lincoln Illustration Competition winner, subtly weaves the lullabies together in a warm blue night that, like the father’s embrace, is immersive, cosy and comforting
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  • We are happy to tell you that Over the Hills and Far Away, a treasury of nursery rhymes from around the world, illustrated by 77 artists is available in the Guardian bookshop
    Over the hills cover
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