I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book

The mood is insouciant glee. A treasure. - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

That’s what children chant when they are being teased; it’s what their parents chanted, and their grandparents and their great-grandparents before them. Collected in this invaluable book are the wit and wisdom of generations of schoolchildren - more than one hundred and seventy rhymes ranging from insults and riddles to tongue twisters, jeers, and jump-rope rhymes. With Iona Opie’s introduction and detailed notes and Maurice Sendak’s remarkable pictures - vignettes, sequences, and full-page paintings both wickedly funny and comically sad - here is a book that deserves a place among the classic texts of childhood.