Preface

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Fun with Short Rhyming Words

I am now 67. We never read Nursery Rhymes in our village school. Our teachers valiantly taught us to master the crazy spelling and the strange grammar of English.

When at 17, I heard the city kids from convent schools recite Nursery Rhymes, I felt that neither they nor I could truly relate to them. The Jacks and Jills with water-pails and broken-crowns, and the Mary’s lamb with snow-white fleece were all foreigners.

I felt that my grandkids need some English rhymes with an Indian flavor. Kids guess the meaning of new words if they grasp the context. And use them with élan.

For us born and brought up in India, English can’t fight the pull of our mother tongues. But, there is no escape from learning English. The collection of Nursery Rhymes here aims to assist our kids in this effort. To each Rhyme is annexed a listing of its new words. The depth of ideas and the novelty of words and idioms increase as we go.

For bookish old folks like me, longer words crop up like weeds crowding the right shorter word. But the hunt is pure joy.

I will be happy if some kids get into the ‘Dictionary Habit’. It is a valley full of flowers just for the picking.

G. P. Sastry Hyderabad, July 2009