I Saw Esau, the Schoolchild’s Pocket Book

edited by Iona & Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. (1992) Published by Candlewick Press. 160 pages.

There’s nothing in this book of taunts, chants and schoolyard riddles that will make you pause very long and ponder the meaning of life, Nor do these poems have the sometimes fantastical scope that you’ll get from a more “legitimate” book of nursery rhymes. But this book is a lot of fun because the editors have no compunction about filling their book with the silliness and capriciousness of true childhood. And Maurice Sendak’s illustrations give you a sense that spirit of this book, if not some of the rhymes themselves, reaches back beyond all the finery of the renaissance to the gritty and grubby world of the dark ages.