It's been 20 years since world-renowned folklorist Iona Opie and beloved illustrator Rosemary Wells (who Opie firmly believes is Mother Goose's second cousin) published the ultimate--and award-winning--nursery rhyme collection My Very First Mother Goose. With this anniversary edition (sporting a fetching new pale-yellow cover), another generation of young children will clap their hands, wiggle their toes and sing-song along to 60 "eccentric, funny, goluptious, haphazard" rhymes, from the familiar ("Hey diddle, diddle,/ the cat and the fiddle...") to the obscure ("Bat, bat,/ Come under my hat,/ And I'll give you a slice of bacon...."). Wells's watercolors, as always, are cozily adorable. Toddlers will gleefully point out the cheese-nibbling mouse at the feet of a happily snoozing cat in plaid bathrobe in "Dickory, dickory, dock," or perhaps they'll notice how the grandfather clock looks like it has cat ears or how the wallpaper buzzes with ace-flyer pigs. Every household needs this book. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor